Raggy Maggie (2 page)

M
y cheeks felt like they were burning. I don’t like talking in front of people. I reckon if I’m ever forced to choose between speaking in public and having my fingernails torn out with pliers, I’ll have to give both options some really serious thought.

‘I didn’t do much,’ I shrugged, hoping that would be enough to get me off the hook. Of course, it wasn’t.

‘You didn’t do much?’ Mr Preston smirked. He half sat, half leaned on his desk, both hands now in his pockets. ‘Surely you can give us a bit more to go on than that?’

My mind raced. What could I say to get this over and
done with quickly? I had to be careful not to reveal anything about Christmas Day itself, but I had to tell him
something.

‘I…met a friend. A girl friend. I mean not a…Just a friend. Who’s a girl.’

As one, the class erupted into a chorus of
‘Ooohs’.

‘Who was it, your
gran
?’ called a voice from the back of the class. I recognised it as Billy Gibb. I’d know those smug tones anywhere.

Billy had a lot of muscle, but not much going on between the ears. He’d been kept back for two years in primary school, and so was much older – and bigger – than anyone else in class. The first time he had been forced to repeat the year on account of having had too many days off. And then, two years after that, he’d been kept back again. On account of being thick.

‘Quieten down,’ Mr Preston warned, giving the entire class one of his glares. As silence fell, he turned back to
me. ‘I’m not sure if I want to hear the details or not,’ he frowned, ‘but carry on.’

I hesitated, boxing off in my head all the things I didn’t dare reveal about Ameena, the girl who had saved my life. I realised quite quickly that what was left wasn’t very interesting at all.

‘Nothing to tell, really,’ I said. ‘Just met her at Christmas.’

‘Where’d you meet her?’ demanded one of the other boys sitting near Billy.

Another pause. Telling them she’d saved me from being strangled to death on my front doorstep wasn’t really an option, even if it was the truth.

Christmas Day felt more and more like some distant, half-remembered nightmare. It had been no dream, though. It had happened. All of it.

I was alone in the house when he’d appeared, crashing through the living-room window in a shower of broken
glass. Mr Mumbles had been my childhood imaginary friend. He’d been my funny little buddy, accompanying me everywhere I went. As I grew up I forgot all about him. Turned out he wasn’t happy about that.

When he came back he was different. Bigger. Stronger. His body and face twisted and disfigured. This time round he wasn’t interested in being friends. He had one goal and one goal only.

Killing me.

He would’ve managed too, had it not been for Ameena. She had appeared like an avenging angel, charging out of the darkness, swinging wildly with a baseball bat. She drove him back, buying us time to get away.

She’d stayed with me for most of the day, helping me when no one else could. How many times did she save my life? Twice? Three times? I couldn’t even remember.

Without her I never would have beaten Mr Mumbles. I
owed her everything – my life, Mum’s, Nan’s. We all would have died had it not been for Ameena.

But I couldn’t tell the class that.

‘Earth to Kyle. Earth to Kyle.’

I blinked back into the present. Mr Preston was standing there, waving a hand slowly in front of my face. I could feel all eyes in the room on me. Somewhere off to the left, someone let out a low snigger.

‘Just bumped into her outside my house,’ I said. ‘We…we hung out for a bit.’

‘What was her name then?’ asked someone else.

‘Ameena,’ I replied. My mouth was going dry. I felt like I was being interrogated by the Secret Service.

‘What kind of name’s that?’

‘A made-up one by the sounds of things,’ sneered Billy. He and his neighbour cackled and exchanged a high-five. I glanced up at Mr Preston imploringly, but he wasn’t ready to let me off the hook just yet.

‘And where is she now?’ he asked, the corners of his mouth twitching. ‘This new friend of yours?’

I was free to answer truthfully this time. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see her again after that.’

Mr Preston took his hands out of his pockets and waved them as if he was conducting an orchestra. ‘Ready, everyone? One, two, three…’

On cue, the whole class joined together in one collective ‘Awwww!’

‘Fascinating stuff, Mr Alexander, truly fascinating,’ said Mr Preston sarcastically. ‘Now sit down, and please – for your sake as well as mine – don’t be late again.’

I shuffled sideways along the slow-moving line, holding my breath when I passed the soggy mound of cabbage that seemed to be crawling up and out of the plastic tub it lurked in.

Turkey burgers – I could hardly believe it. The first day
back to school after the Christmas holidays and the canteen was serving turkey burgers. Someone somewhere had decided this was the perfect choice for the first-day-back menu. Incredible.

‘You not meeting your new bird for lunch then?’ I heard someone shout.

Billy Gibb had barged into the queue a few places ahead of me. He was staring at me now, waiting for some kind of response. I just shook my head and looked down at my cracked wooden tray. I didn’t need this. Not today.

I could spend all day describing the things that made Billy such an unpleasant person to be around. I could talk about his stupid, wispy facial hair. I could mention the way his nostrils were always flared and curving upwards, as if a dog had taken a crap on his top lip and his nose was doing its best to crawl away. I could even go on about his smell – fifty per cent stale cigarette smoke, fifty per cent even staler sweat, one hundred per cent revolting.

Really, though, what bothered me most was his personality. Or, to put it more accurately, his total lack of one.

‘She must’ve been a right dog to fancy you,’ he continued, trying to goad me into a fight. I wasn’t going to rise to it. I was better than that. Plus, he could kick my head in with one leg tied behind his back.

I heard him and a few of his mates jeering at me as I picked up my tray and walked away, but I tried not to listen. The healthy-eating counter didn’t have a queue – the healthy-eating counter
never
had a queue – so I could hopefully get served there and have my lunch eaten before he’d even ordered his.

The dinner lady on duty had her back to me as I approached. I waited patiently at the counter. I didn’t dare say anything, in case the shock of having a customer in this part of the canteen killed her stone dead.

After almost a minute, when she still showed no sign of turning in my direction, I gave a low, gentle cough.

That seemed to do the trick. With her two-sizes-too-small nylon uniform almost bursting at the seams, she at last shuffled round to look at me. Well, not exactly
look.
As she turned, I could see she was holding a chipped and dirty plate in front of her, completely hiding her face.

‘Um…hi,’ I began, assuming she’d move the plate when I started speaking. ‘Have you got anything that’s
quite
healthy, but not
too
healthy?’ The plate didn’t move. Maybe this was what being stuck on the healthy-eating counter all day did to you.

‘Like, do you do low-fat hot dogs or something? Or veggie burgers, but with, like, a little bit of meat in them?’

She just stood there, not responding, the plate not moving. I glanced across at the rest of the canteen. Everyone was going about their own business – ordering lunches, scoffing food, stuffing chips up smaller kids’ noses. No one was paying me or Plate Face the slightest bit of attention.

‘Er…hello?’ I tried. ‘Can you hear me?’

A low breath escaped her lips, like the ominous rumblings of a once dormant volcano. Slowly, she leaned her head a little to the right, as she tilted the plate slightly to the left. A single eye peered at me from around the cracked crockery’s edge.

‘Peek-a-boo,’ she whispered. ‘I seeeee you.’

The plate slipped from her fingers. A roar of delight went up from the kids in the canteen as the crockery shattered loudly on the patterned linoleum floor.

‘Nice work killing the dinner lady,’ grinned Billy, punctuating the sentence by punching me hard on the arm.

‘I didn’t kill her,’ I told him, pulling my schoolbag higher up on to my shoulder and quickening my pace along the science corridor. ‘She fainted.’

She
had
fainted. The second the plate had shattered on the ground, she’d kind of slumped down, like a puppet
whose strings had all snapped. Complete pandemonium had followed, with the teachers all trying to help her up, and the pupils all falling over each other to take photos on their mobiles.

Most of the kids had been laughing, or chattering excitedly. Not me. There was something unsettling about the way the dinner lady had behaved. And what she’d said to me – she’d spoken the same words as Hector the postman had spoken this morning. Something was happening, I knew, but what that something was I had no idea.

Two of Billy’s friends rushed up to join him, and all thoughts of the dinner lady and the postie melted away. The three boys surrounded me – a minion on each side, Billy walking backwards in front of me.

‘Must’ve been your way with women,’ one of the lackeys snickered.

‘Or his smell,’ Billy suggested. All three of them laughed
at that. I wanted to tell Billy I couldn’t possibly stink as badly as he did, but on the other hand I also wanted to live to see my next birthday.

Around us, other kids hurried on their way, not one of them so much as glancing in my direction as they scuttled past. I wasn’t expecting anyone to jump in and save me, but even a bit of supportive eye contact from someone would have been nice.

Every few steps, Billy would jab one of his sausage-like fingers into my shoulder. Each time was harder than the one before. I had to get him talking and get his mind off pushing me around, before he did me some serious damage.

‘My mum’s babysitting your little sister today,’ I said.

‘I know. My mum’s paying her twenty quid to do it.’ Billy’s face stretched into a mocking grin. ‘She says she feels sorry for your mum because she’s too useless to get a proper job. It’s like charity, she says, since you’re so poor.’

I felt my teeth clamp together and my fingers curl into fists. I didn’t mind him pushing me around. I could take that. But not my mum. Nobody made fun of my mum.

I stopped dead. The other boys carried on a few paces before they realised what had happened. Billy stopped, then looked me up and down, pausing briefly at my clenched fists. ‘Oh yeah?’ he sneered.

All three of them stepped in close to me, looming above me. Billy was right in my face, his nose next to mine, his stinking breath swirling up my nostrils. I stared up into his narrowed eyes, not flinching.

The other two were right at my sides. There was no way I could swing a punch without them stopping it. They were both poised, ready to grab my arms. Ready to hold me while Billy pummelled.

I felt my nerve go. The anger that had burned through me was snuffed out by a wave of fear.

‘You want to say something to me?’ Billy snarled. ‘Eh?’

I wanted to say a lot of things to him, but I didn’t dare. He made a sharp move towards me and I flinched. All three boys laughed at that.

‘So?’ he hissed. ‘What was it you wanted to say?’

My mind raced. My mouth went dry. I had to think of something to say, and fast.

And then I remembered – well, not exactly
remembered,
because the experience was one I would never, ever be able to forget. Right then, though, was the first time I’d put two and two together properly.

While hiding from Mr Mumbles I’d somehow transported myself to somewhere called the Darkest Corners. It was a horrible, terrifying place, full of horrible, terrifying creatures. That was where I’d met the girl.

She couldn’t have been more than five years old, but something about her had chilled me to the bone. Her skin was as pale as death, but caked here and there with thick blobs of make-up. A smear of lipstick across her mouth.
Rings of black shadow around her eyes. A little girl playing at dressing up.

She had mentioned Billy. Or a Billy, at least. I doubted she was talking about this one, but it was worth a shot.

‘I met another girl I think you might know,’ I said shakily.

‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ Billy crowed. ‘I know a lot of girls. What did she look like?’

He stepped back a little, so I quickly continued.

‘She was young,’ I said. ‘Maybe five or something?’ I glanced up at him. ‘She had a doll.’

‘A doll?’ he snorted. ‘Don’t know who you’re talking about.’

‘Weird-looking thing. The doll, I mean. The girl too, actually. What was her name again…?’ I wracked my brains. ‘Caddie,’ I announced. ‘That was it.’

The colour drained from Billy’s face, leaving him an ashen shade of grey. He eyeballed me, his head shaking
ever so slightly from side to side.

‘Who told you about that?’ he demanded.

‘No one,’ I answered. ‘I met her. She asked if I knew you, said that you used to play with her or something.’

‘Shut up,’ Billy hissed. ‘You can’t…You…Who’ve you been talking to?’

I smiled nervously. Billy looked like a bomb about to explode, and I was standing directly in his path. ‘No one,’ I insisted. ‘I wasn’t speaking to any—’

The punch crunched into the soft bit between my stomach and my chest, and I felt my lungs instantly cramp up. Before I realised what was happening, Billy had me by the front of my shirt. He was shouting something, but all my attention was focused on trying to draw a breath, and I missed most of what he said.

‘…
ever
talk about that again,’ was the only bit I caught, before he pushed me to the floor and stalked off, his two minions following close behind.

Fighting the urge to puke, I crouched on the floor, feeling my breath gradually return. A few of my classmates glanced pityingly at me as they rushed past, but none of them bothered to stop.