Jelly Cooper: Alien (4 page)

We amble towards school, neither of us in any sort of hurry to get there.  I have my personal demons and so does Humphrey.  His is called Michael and it plays football.

From out of nowhere, a vision from the nightmare flares.  My step falters and Humph grabs my arm.  Staunch resolve not to be such a girl and years of hard-earned emotional armour crumble, leaving just me, naked (so-to-speak) and afraid, which is a new and unwelcome experience. 

Humphrey
stares at me, eyes troubled.

“OK,” I
say, my voice a little shaky (which I immediately hate myself for).  “Come over tonight.”

We walk
.

“Bring Agatha.”

Agatha’s clever.  It always pays to have a clever person close by.

Now I just need to get through school without confrontation or mishap. 

Easy peasy.

***              ***              ***

Chemistry is the middle science in the Jelly Cooper chart.  By that, I mean that it is better than physics (well, isn’t everything?) but not as good as biology.  Sometimes, chemistry lessons are interesting and fun and sometimes they make me want to drink the suspect blue liquid Mr. Carmichael keeps at the back of the storeroom, just to see what will happen.  Maybe I’ll turn into a raving mad thing and tear apart the classroom.  That would brighten up the lesson.

Today we’re making liquids change colour and burning stuff, which is both interesting
and
fun so, alas, no drinking old bluey for me.

Well, I would be burning stuff if my
clicky ignity thing worked.  I shake it, stick it over the gas and try again.

Click.

Nothing.  Great.  Everyone else’s Bunsen is burning away and the liquid mix in their jars is swirling mysteriously while my Bunsen sits unlit and my liquid is stagnant and very un-mysterious.  I growl and shake the clicky ignity thing with more vigour.  It flies from my hand and sails across the lab.

Mr. Carmichael frowns and shakes his head.

Fantastic.  Maybe I should go get bluey after all.

I curse under my breath and glare at my failed experiment.

All you had to do was burn you little shi –

The Bunsen burner bursts into flame. 

Oh-kay. 

I look over my shoulder.  No one is paying any attention. 

Did my Bunsen burner just light itself?

Timothy Prescott taps me on the shoulder and hands me my
clicky ignity thing.

Yup.
  Looks like it did.

Why do I always get the dodgy warped stuff?

***
              ***              ***

He’s not reading it properly and he’s
ruining
it.

I don’t like many subjects, but I love English and I love this book we’re studying and Jason Stevens is spoiling it and it’s making me hyperventilate. 

Why did Miss Walsh have to pick him, of all people, to read today?  I’m starting to have real doubts about the calibre of Seabrook’s English teacher.  In fact, I’m beginning to think that Miss Walsh is a thicko.  Nothing else would explain how she could pick Jason Stevens to read aloud the bit where Atticus shoots the rabid dog.  Who’s she going to ask to read the trial scene – Rhiannon?

If that happens, swear to God, I won’t be able to stop myself doing something really bad.

Unlike now.  Look at the restraint I’m showing when all I want to do is grab that book from Jason Stevens’ hands and batter him around the head with it.

Why doesn’t he read it properly?  Doesn’t he get how good this book is?  Doesn’t it do
anything
for him?

If he’s not going to read it properly, you’d think he’d at least have the decency to trip over Miss Walsh’s handbag and knock himself out on his way to the deck.

Up at the front of the classroom, Jason Stevens’ foot catches in the shoulder strap of Miss Walsh’s handbag.  He tumbles forward and smacks his head on the side of her desk.  He falls to the ground like a tree being felled. 
To Kill a Mockingbird
flies from his outstretched hand and spins across the floor.  It comes to rest against the metal bin with a soft clang.

Miss Walsh yelps and Gavin Boulder gives
Mervyn Winters the thumbs up.  It takes the ambulance six minutes to get here.  Impressive.

I think I’m going insane.

***
              ***              ***

I tell myself that what happened to Jason Stevens wasn’t my doing.  I tell it to myself all the way through South Block, across the netball court, through North Block hallway and into the canteen.  My breathing kind of shallow, I scan the room for Humphrey or Agatha, but there’s no sign.

I wish they
were
here.  I need to talk to someone.  I need to get rid of this madness in my mind.

My heartbeat’s going crazy; it’s jumping around all over the place.  My head feels a little
squooshy too.  Wow, there are a lot of people in this canteen.  And lots of food and foody smells.  And the noise!  Like those Caribbean kettle drums.  I hate those.  Everyone seems to love them though.  Can’t understand it.  And look, there’s Rhiannon.

Rhiannon.

If I did that to Jason Stevens just for reading wrong –

I didn’t touch him!

- imagine what I could do to Rhiannon just for being Rhiannon.

I’ve got to get out of here.

Dread swills round my stomach.  Dread that has been growing in my belly since I left home this morning.

I have to get out of school.  I have to get home.

No!  Not home.

I hear the sound of my own breath as my lungs fight to draw air against contractions of panic.  Something bad is going to happen to my family.  I suddenly know it with a certainty that’s terrifying.  Something’s coming - something unshakable, unstoppable - and it’s coming for me.  My family is in the way of it and me.  I don’t think it, whatever
it
is, is going to like that and I have a horrible feeling that time is running out.

It’s lunch time.  I have lessons all afternoon.  I need to calm down and breathe deep and get control of this thing and stick out the rest of the day. 

I look around for a spare seat. 

Rhiannon sees me and the corners of her mouth curl.

I turn and run.  I run all the way home.

***              ***              ***

“Keys.  Where the bloody
hell
are my keys?”

Stood on the doorstep, rummaging in the cavernous depths of my bag, my throat tightens.

I’m tired.  So tired that I’m going to burst into tears unless I find my keys, get indoors and into bed in the next thirty seconds.

I rest my forehead against the door and close my eyes.  Someone up there takes pity on me and my fingers brush the serrated edge of a key.  I yank the bunch out of the bag, slam the key in the lock and tumble into the hallway.

What’s the matter with me?  My life is going haywire.

“Mum!” I shout to the kitchen.  “We’ve been sent home early because Jason Stevens had an accident.  Agatha and Humphrey are coming over later.  I’ll be upstairs.”

Without waiting for an answer, I head up to my room and sit on the bed, shaking and trying not to die.

Chapter Four

BANG
BANG BANG!

I wake violently
, choking on fear.

“Come in.”

My voice is shaky.  That’s just great.  I prepare to be mad at whoever has the nerve to bang on my door like the local debt collector.  The door swings open and Molly walks into the room.  I replace the frown with a smile.  It feels all tight and strange on my face.

Molly is
an unbelievable pest and would be a nightmare to live with if not for the fact that she is adorable.  She loves me with a lack of reserve that only a kid can and, in return, I adore her and try to protect her from all the nastiness in the world.  It’s our deal and it works for the both of us in our own way.  It’ll probably change in the future, but then things do, don’t they?  Roll with the dice, change with the times and all that malarkey.

The unbelievable pest
approaches the bed, her arms extended in front of her, ‘Emily dolly’ clutched tightly in her hand.

Shaking off the shackles of unhappy slumber,
I jump up and hoist her into the air, twirling us both around until she screams with laughter.  Plonking her back on the floor, I chuckle as she sways like a drunk and topples forward into the duvet.  Molly giggles and slides to the floor, so I kneel and tickle her belly. 

But she doesn’t laugh and she doesn’t try and squirm away.  She
cocks her head to one side and appraises me with the full intensity of a six-year-old.  It’s very unnerving, so I try hard not to be unnerved.

“You look funny.”

“Thanks a lot,” I grunt. 

“
You do!  You look funny.  Your eyes are broken.”

My eyes are broken.  Unease stirs in my stomach.
  As Molly stares at me with terrifying honesty, it swells into dread.

“Molly, what’s wrong with my eyes?”

She squints at me for a long time then nods her head, her bobbed hair swinging. 

“
They’re on fire.”

Ri-ight
.

Molly picks herself up and straightens her skirt.  Clutching Emily dolly by the hand, she walks to the bedroom door.

“Mum said to tell you Humpty’s downstairs.”

“Humphrey,”
I mumble out of habit.

“Yup,
he’s downstairs eating biscuits.”

Clearing my throat, I murmur, “
um – tell him to come up.”

“
Cool,” Molly grins and rushes off.  She has a super-crush on Humphrey and thinks they’re going to get married when she’s ten. 

I run a hand through my hair.

So now my eyes are burning?  Well of course they are, because I’m going mad and my world is collapsing.  I think I just experienced my first hallucination. 

I should note that down in my diary; mark the date or something.  The
head-doctors will probably need to know stuff like that.  When did it happen, where did it happen, what happened, exactly? 

Just one problem:
I don’t have a diary.  I’ve never had a diary.

First thing tomorrow.
  I’ll go and buy a diary first thing tomorrow.   

A soft knock
sounds on the door.  The sound runs through my body like a tazer blast.  The door creaks open a couple of inches and Humphrey pokes his head into the room.

“Safe to come in?”

Humphrey exercises extreme caution when entering my room.  He once walked in on me fastening my bra and was too mortified to look at me for a week.

I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.  For the first time in my life, my voice refuses me.  Humphrey strides into the room and grabs me by the shoulders.

“You look like hell.  What’s going on?  Are you OK?”

“If it makes you feel any better, I’ll go and tidy
myself up.”  It was meant to come out all biting and sarcastic, but comes out all scratchy and pathetic. “Don’t make me flick your ear,” I say, tetchily, and sit on the bed with my head in my hands.

When I was little,
we used to have a strange decoration on our Christmas tree: a toy doll with a tiny body and a big plastic head.  It was a little girl with brown hair and a cute, freckled face.  The head and the body were connected by a retractable string and every time you gave the head a tug, as the string retracted the body, the girl would say something in a loud American accent.  She had a couple of different sayings, like ‘I’ve lost my head over you!’ and, bizarrely, ‘there goes my mommeeeee’, but my favourite had always been: ‘I’m falling apart, tee hee!’

“Humphrey, I think I’m falling apart.”

He sits beside me.

“Go
and splash some water on your face and take a couple of deep breaths.  You look like little orphan Annie and I can’t concentrate properly with you all fruzzy and spaced out.”

He smiles at me and gives me a quick hug.

I trudge to the bathroom, secretly grateful to Humphrey for making light of the mess I’m becoming. I close the bathroom door and catch sight of myself in the mirror.  There’s no doubt about it; I look like hell.

My hair is
cobbed and tangled from running against the wind and my skin is the colour of bone; even the dreaded freckles seem to have faded.  My eyes are sparklier than I’ve ever seen them.  No wonder Molly thought that I looked funny; I scare myself.