by Anne Fine
‘What’s all this Mrs Springer tells me about you hiding that book I gave you under your song sheet?’
But it was impossible to stop reading. By this time in the story, people couldn’t post back their bits of red rock fast enough. But one little girl, the one you can see on the cover, had slid a tiny chip into the pocket of her frock without her parents even noticing. It had fallen out into the suitcase. And there it lay, out of sight and out of mind, through all the dreadful things that had begun to happen to her family, one after another, because of the curse.
I had the usual problems that night at home, as well.
‘I’m warning you, Melly. This light’s going out in five minutes.’
‘People your age still need their sleep, you know.’
‘Why can’t you just put it down, and finish it tomorrow?’
But finally, next morning, I reached the end. Gordon was desperate to have it next, so I made its card out right away, and during library hour I put Red Rock on top of the pile of books in front of Imogen.
‘Can you stick a yellow dot on this one, so Gordon can take it home today?’
‘Sure,’ she said, reaching out for it. And then the blood drained from her face. It was extraordinary. I must have read the words a hundred times. ‘Her cheeks went pale.’ ‘Her face went ashen.’ ‘She turned quite white with shock.’ But I would never in a thousand years have guessed it looked like this. It was as if someone had pulled a plug in the bottom of her feet.
I was sure she was fainting, so I stepped in close, to catch her as she fell. And that’s the only reason I was near enough to hear her whispering to the little girl on the book cover.
‘No! Not that bit of rock! Don’t pick up that one, please!’
‘Imogen? Imogen!’
It can’t have been more than a moment but it seemed an age before she looked up, startled. Her face was still grey and clammy. ‘What?’
She hadn’t realized that I’d heard what she was whispering.
‘Nothing,’ I muttered. And it was true that, when it came to saying something, my mind had gone completely blank.
But I was thinking plenty. After all, if it was ‘hot off the press’, she couldn’t possibly have read the book.
So how could she have known what was going to happen?
CHAPTER FOUR
That’s when I went to talk to Mr Hooper a second time. Don’t get me wrong. I love ghost tales as much as anyone. I adore stories in which people have weird dreams, and strange things happen. But that’s in books. Real life is supposed to be real, and I like my world to be solid around me. After all, nobody wants to find themselves suddenly trapped in the haunted house they’ve been watching on television, sensing a presence, and feeling the air going ice-cold around them.
But I was too spooked to go about it the right way. Instead of explaining properly, I just rushed up to Mr Hooper and asked him, ‘Can I please dump Imogen now? She knows her way around, and everything.’
He wasn’t pleased.
‘Melly,’ he said to me sternly. ‘I’ve told you before, a week is only a week. Now try and be friendly. It’ll be good for you.’
I felt like saying, ‘You can talk. You were much nicer to Jason when he was new.’ But he’d have thought I was just being cheeky, so I gave up and walked away. And since there was only one more day to go, I tried sticking it out. But it’s not easy, sitting next to someone who sees through the covers into books. You can’t ask straight out, ‘Are you some sort of witch? Do you have second sight?’ So I thought I was going about it in a pretty polite and roundabout way when, strolling back from the lunch hall, I said, all casually, ‘Imogen, do you believe in looking into the future?’
She spun to face me. ‘Looking into the future?’
‘You know,’ I said. ‘Crystal balls and stuff. Knowing about things even before they happen.’
Now she was looking positively hunted. ‘Why are you asking?’ she demanded. ‘Have people been talking about me?’
All the unease I’d been feeling curdled in the pit of my stomach. Either this new girl was a whole lot cleverer at teasing than I’d imagined, or the world was shifting nastily under my feet.
‘Tell me you’re joking, Imogen.’
You could see that she knew she’d made a big mistake.
‘Of course I’m joking,’ she tried to backtrack. ‘I was just having you on.’
But I could feel hairs rising on the back of my neck, because I knew she was lying.
I looked around. Practically everyone in the class was in the school grounds with us. Why did it have to be me?
‘Listen, Imogen,’ I told her. ‘You know that I was only asked to look after you for the first week, not stick like glue for life. And this is our last day, so I’ll be taking off now, if that’s all right with you.’
I’d have looked hurt, but she looked devastated.
‘But, Melly. I thought we were—’
She stopped, and stared down at her feet while the word ‘friends’ echoed, unspoken, between us. She looked as if she’d been slapped. I couldn’t try and pretend that everyone’s first-week minder simply strides off halfway through the last day. And I hate lying. So it just popped out.
‘I’m sorry, Imogen. I really am. But I can’t be friends with you. You’re just too creepy. I’m too scared.’
If someone blurted something like that out in my face, I’d stare in astonishment, and squawk, ‘What?’ But Imogen simply looked as if she’d been half expecting it.
‘All right,’ she said, turning away. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You do understand?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘I understand.’
And somehow that made me feel a whole lot worse. Imagine how you’d feel if you refused to be friends with someone who’s only ever been perfectly polite and anxious to please, just because they were different or had something wrong with them. And then imagine they said that to you.
Like me, you’d feel an absolute worm.
I stood and watched her walk away. She didn’t look back. She didn’t even try to pretend she had something to do in the cloakroom. She just set off towards the emptiest part of the school grounds, where she’d be alone. I dug my book out of my bag and turned the other way, to head for the lunchtime library.
And then I thought suddenly: ‘Poor Imogen! Now she can’t even go there.’
And I felt even worse. You see, all the way through school, I’ve used book corners and lunchtime library to hide away, and spend my break times reading. You know as well as I do that being a bookworm in school is like having a protective shield. It sends a message: ‘Please leave me out of things unless I ask. Act as if I’m not here. It’s not that I’m lonely. It’s just that I’m happy on my own.’
And it is true. I wouldn’t want to have to get through even one day the way the others do it. I see them, constantly in each other’s company, always cheerful, always chatty. They never get ratty when someone suddenly begins to plait their hair without even asking, or begs to try on their glasses, or pesters them for hours about who is their favourite singer. Twenty different people can come up, one after another, and tell them something they already know, like, ‘You’ve got a cold,’ or, ‘Those are new shoes you’re wearing,’ and they keep smiling. They don’t even mind.
I don’t know how they do it. I’d go mad. So making someone feel even a tiny bit awkward about hiding away anywhere, especially the book corner, would be, to me, like snatching away a lifebelt.
I couldn’t do it to my own worst enemy. I certainly couldn’t do it to someone who’d never done anything except try to be pleasant and helpful.
I had to run after her. ‘Imogen! Wait a minute! Stop!’
And she turned and smiled at me. So that was that settled.
CHAPTER FIVE
It must have been a good long while since Imogen had had a friend. No-one else wanted to be near her. This was the reason, she admitted, she’d left her old school. Only a few of
her classmates had gone around whispering that she was ‘creepy’ – the ones she thought must have been talking to me – but all of the rest had kept away from her as much as possible, making giant great fusses if they were even asked to share a desk or a table.
‘What, even in work groups?’
The tears sprang. ‘It was horrible.’
I felt so sorry for her. And the teachers had found her crying in corners so often that, in the end, they had suggested she might be better starting afresh in a new school.
Ours.
The problem was, of course, that you could see it was all happening again, exactly the same. Everyone except me avoided her. It wasn’t like giving someone the big freeze because they’ve been spiteful, or something. In fact, I don’t believe people even realized they were doing it. But somehow, everywhere Imogen went, everyone melted away.
And it wasn’t just the book corner, because the first time I really noticed it, she and I were walking down the corridor towards the lunch room. Paul had bent down to tie up his shoe-lace, but, as the two of us came close, I saw him hastily straighten up and drift off, with his shoe-lace still flapping.
Funny, I thought.
And then the two girls from another class who had been sitting on the window-ledge, sharing a book, suddenly closed it without a word, and wandered away.
We went into lunch, and, now I’d noticed it, I realized it had been happening all week. Whenever the two of us had headed for a busy table, within seconds everyone was stacking their dishes back onto their trays, and taking them over to the hatches.
Then, on the way back from the cloakroom on my own, I bumped into Maria and Tasj.
‘Don’t you find it a bpit creepy, going round with her?’ Tasj asked me outright. ‘She’s so weird.’
‘Seriously strange,’ agreed Maria.
I tried to defend her. ‘She doesn’t bother me. I get on with her all right.’
But I was definitely the only one. It wasn’t just Mr Hooper who avoided her. Even the other teachers seemed to move away when she was near. That afternoon I stood waiting while Imogen rooted in her book bag to make sure she still had her calculator. Just across the hall, Miss Harvey and Mr Sands were standing together, checking something on a chart. Suddenly, Mr Sands looked quite distracted. He glanced round uneasily, then said to Miss Harvey, ‘Shall we go and do this—’ He obviously couldn’t think of anywhere else they should be doing it, so he just finished up lamely, ‘–somewhere else?’
I didn’t think the idea would go down very well. Miss Harvey’s famous in our school for not wasting time. She’s usually telling the people in her class what to do even before she walks through the door. But now she, too, was looking round a bit uncomfortably, a bit unsure. And together, still holding the chart, they moved off across the hallway.
Away from their classrooms, I noticed.
Away from Imogen.
And away from me.
So even I ended up having to ask myself how I could stand being so close to someone so spooky. And I can’t really explain, except to say that, from the moment I ran after her, she never bothered me at all the way she bothered other people. I never felt the urge to drift away. Now, looking back, I wonder if it was because I was the only one who knew for certain there was something strange about her. I didn’t have to share their vague, uneasy feeling. But sometimes I think that all that time spent with my head in books had made weird people so familiar to me that I barely thought twice. After all, no-one writes a story that boils down to, ‘Once, there was a normal young girl, and nothing of interest happened her whole life.’ And, if they did, no-one would bother to read it. Would you have finished the last book you read if it had been about a plain, happy person doing nothing but plain, happy things?
When you were three, perhaps. Certainly not now.
So I was interested in her. And she turned out to be the perfect friend for someone like me. She was quiet, and she didn’t mind spending half her life in the book corner and the other half in the library.
But, though he didn’t seem to want to spend too much time near her himself, the fact that she didn’t mix with the others did bother Mr Hooper.
‘Imogen, maybe you shouldn’t be spending all your time skulking between bookshelves like Melly.’
I looked up from the thriller I was reading. ‘This is a school,’ I teased him. ‘You ought to be pleased we’re sitting quietly with our noses in books.’
And he never noticed that, though my nose was, hers certainly wasn’t. It even took me a while to realize that Imogen never actually read a book. Oh, she’d run her fingertips along the shelves, and pick one out. She had her favourites. One had a country scene on the cover.
“It was so pretty it could have been made of gingerbread . . .”
Another had children playing happily with puppies and kittens.
“But, best of all, Flora loved Little Fluffy.”
She’d settle on one of the little yellow tubs, hold the book in her lap and stare off in the distance. If someone walked past, she’d open what she’d chosen quickly, anywhere, and look down until they’d gone by.
But most of the time she was just sitting with a look of pure enchantment on her face, as if she’d been whisked away somewhere magical.
‘Happy?’ I’d ask her, and she’d nod dreamily.
Then, ‘Happy?’ she’d ask me back, and I’d nod as well, because things were going pretty well for me, too, now that Mr Hooper had at last got me down for having a friend, and stopped nagging me about mixing and joining in, and all that stuff.
Yet Imogen kept everyone away.
Especially in swimming. And I love swimming. It’s the only sport I like. Mr Hooper says that’s because it’s practically the only thing we do in school in which I know I’m safe from hearing things like, ‘Now get yourselves into two teams,’ or ‘Choose groups to work in,’ or the one that I really loathe, which is, ‘Now choose a partner.’
And it is true, I love that feeling when you’ve finally found a bit of a space in the middle of all that shrieking and splashing. You let your feet slip out in front of you along the tiles, your head slides under, your hair floats up like weed, and just for a moment everyone’s vanished. It’s just you and your own magical, glistening bubbles.
Then someone steams past, kicking and shrieking, and the world’s back again, spoiling it totally.
But Imogen worked like a secret barrier. Nobody except me realized, but from the moment she began picking her way down the steps into the shallows, everyone else was suddenly deciding to practise their racing starts up at the deep end of the pool, or hang by their feet from the bar along the other side.
It was brilliant for me. If I stayed near her, there was so much clear space around us that I could even practise my tumble turns.
‘Keep on like this,’ said Miss Rorty, ‘and you’ll win that Harries Cup for sure. I’ll put my money on you.’
Over and over I pushed myself back from the side, to try again. And it was only after she blew the whistle, and I was getting out, that I had that really chilling thought.
Miss Rorty was horrified. ‘Look at you, child!’ she said, snatching up the nearest towel, and wrapping me tight, as if I were one of the infants. ‘You’re covered in goose-pimples. You’re shivering fit to burst!’
But it wasn’t cold. I didn’t want to explain it, even if I could have done, through chattering teeth. It was something quite different.
The thought had suddenly struck me, getting out, that it was all very well for me to think that there was something weird about Imogen. But what about me?
After all, what would you think? How would you explain someone not even minding spending half an hour in a corner of the pool which, if they thought about it for a moment, they would have to admit was practically halfway to being haunted?
CHAPTER SIX
Then she came top in something. It was terrifying. We’d just finished reading Tyke Samuel together as our book in class. ‘N
ow write an essay,’ Mr Hooper said. ‘Pretend you’re little orphan Sam, sent up to clear the chimneys of some great house. Write what he’s thinking.’
I love it when Mr Hooper doesn’t spoil things by making us talk about our stories before we write them. I settled down at once, and scribbled frantically till the bell rang. I didn’t look up much, but, when I did, I saw that instead of staring round the room as usual, sucking her pencil, Imogen was busily writing, too.
Mr Hooper made Tasj collect them all for him at the end, finished or not, and then we rushed out, because it was going home time. But when we came back in the morning, he was looking thrilled.
‘I’m pleased with everyone. Most of you did a good job. But one of the stories was astonishing. Truly outstanding.’
I know it sounds as if I’m being Miss Boastie. But I did really think it must be me.
‘Imogen!’
I wasn’t the only person to turn and stare. (We all knew how awful her work was.) But no-one could doubt that she’d written every word of it all by herself, because we’d been in the room with her.
Mr Hooper handed her sheets of paper back. ‘Go on. Read it out to everyone.’
She fingered her necklace anxiously. ‘Oh, no! I couldn’t.’
‘Of course you can.’
‘No, really!’
But Mr Hooper can’t stand what he calls ‘people being silly’. ‘Imogen,’ he said in his firm voice. ‘Just stop fussing, and read it out to everyone now.’
Her fingers trembled as she held it up in front of her. The pages shook. She started off in such a nervous, stumbling voice that we couldn’t make sense of it. She was tripping over some words. She was puzzling over others. You’d think, to watch and listen, she’d never heard a word of it before, let alone written it.
In the end, Mr Hooper had to take pity on her. Stretching towards her, he prised the sheets of paper out of her hands, and went back to his own desk.