Rivalry at Silver Spires (5 page)

“What about if you did it from inside?”

“Then I think I'd get detention!” she laughed. “I'm not sure that cameras are allowed at the poolside – Mrs. Mellor would think I'm mad!”

“What's so funny?” asked Georgie, coming in at that moment and going straight online.

When we told her she laughed too, but then the laughter died away and I instantly knew why.

“It's another message, isn't it?” I said heavily. “Let me see.”

This time when I read the words I felt like bursting into tears.

Don't choo-choo skinny gal cos skinny = useless = loser

“It's from
Torpedo Gal
,” said Jess sadly. She turned away.

“Wh…what's
choo-choo
?” I asked shakily.

“Train,” said Georgie quietly. “She's telling you not to train.”

I could feel myself going all crumbly inside, but I wanted to stay strong because the moment I showed fear one of my friends would be sure to go to a teacher. “How do you know she means…me? I'm not…the only skinny one.” But even as I was saying it I was remembering how I'd stood on the side for a while fiddling with my goggles and swimming hat so I could try to see if Felissia was in the pool. Perhaps it had looked like I was showing off. I flopped down into the seat beside Jess, as a horrible thought suddenly occurred to me. I blurted it out, because it felt too shocking to keep inside. “I don't think it
is
Felissia, you know.”

“What!” said Georgie, swinging her head round.

My mind was zooming back over the whole swimming session, taking snapshots along the way… Bibi staring at me with her arms stretched out along the rail. Hannah and Bibi practising tumble turns. Me doing a perfect one. The way they looked at me, then got out almost immediately after.

“Think about it…” I said dully. “Felissia's not much different in height and shape from me. But Bibi and Hannah are miles bigger. Why should Felissia say anything about me being skinny?” I hung my head. “And they were practising tumble turns and I just stupidly went and did a perfect one. They must have thought I was a total show-off. I wish I hadn't done it. It's my own fault.”

Jess's eyes were wide with shock. “You can't blame yourself, Grace!
They're
the evil ones.
And
they're threatening you!” She bit her lip. “I mean…whoever it is…”

“Yes,” said Georgie, looking just as put out as Jess. “Whoever it is, they've got the cheek to tell you not to train. Huh!”

The door opened and we all jumped for no reason except that the message had made us tense.

“It's only me! Not a ghost!” said Mia, trying to make us smile. But a second later she realized we were deadly serious. “Wh…what's happened?”

“Tell you in the dorm,” said Jess flatly.

So a few minutes later, as we were all getting ready for bed, I explained about the message to Mia, Naomi and Katy.

“Whoever it is, it's definitely
their
problem, not yours,” said Naomi, looking cross.

“Don't you think Grace ought to report it?” asked Georgie, eyes flashing.

“The teachers would be furious if they knew that people were using the chat room for this kind of thing,” Katy said.

“Exactly! And they'd probably ban it,” I pointed out. “Then if people found out it was thanks to me, they'd hate me!” I shivered without meaning to. “I really don't want to report it,” I said, turning to Naomi and talking to her in a panicky gabble like she was my mum. “Remember you said I mustn't let it bother me, Naomi?”

She nodded slowly, her big eyes staring into the distance as though she could remember saying it, but wasn't quite so convinced about it any more. Jess put her arm round me and I took a deep breath. I was trying to be so brave and strong, but inside I was turning to jelly.

It wasn't easy keeping my nerve till swimming squad on Wednesday. Whenever I was anywhere near the main building, it was tempting to rush in and scrub my name off the list, but I knew that if I did that one of my friends would try and explain everything to Miss Carol or Mrs. Mellor. Each time Georgie went on the computer I felt myself tensing right up, because I was sure it would only take one more horrible message aimed at me before one of them went right ahead and reported it. And there was another reason why I didn't want to show how worried I really felt, too; because if I lost my nerve I might never get it back and then I'd be so disappointed in myself. My parents had brought me up to face up to things and always to try my best and never give in. And that's what I was doing right now, even though it felt like the hardest test I'd ever had in my life.

“Remember,” said Jess, catching my tense look as I was about to set off to the pool, “Mrs. Mellor will be there,
and
Miss Snow and the lifeguard…” Her eyes flashed. “So if Bibi or Hannah say anything nasty or threatening to you, you just tell someone straight away, okay?”

Now I felt as though
Jess
was my mum. I tried to make my voice as light as possible. “It'll be fine, I'm sure.”

There were twenty of us in the swimming squad and we got changed on our own while Mrs. Mellor sorted things out in the pool area. I was chatting to a girl called Evie from Oakley House, who's really bubbly and reminds me a bit of Georgie. I made doubly sure I pushed my clothes deep into my bag this time and left the bag right at the very back of the bench. Then I wrapped myself in my towel and sat on the bench waiting for Evie, feeling strange and isolated even with all the chatter going on around me.

“Grace,
you're
ready,” said Mrs. Mellor, appearing suddenly and bringing me out of my daydream. “Off you go.”

As soon as I got to the pool area I went straight down the steps, not even noticing whether the water was cold or not. I did backstroke to the other end, taking care to keep looking over my shoulder to check I wasn't about to bash into anyone, then I did breaststroke back to the shallow end because by then Bibi and Hannah were in the pool, swimming back and forth across the deep end, and Felissia was lying on her back right in the middle with her eyes closed, getting her friend to pull her around. Cassie was laughing away.

After a few minutes of warm-up, Mrs. Mellor jumbled up all the different houses into five teams for a medley relay, and told us which lane to line up by at the deep end. I wasn't put with Bibi or Hannah
or
Felissia, thank goodness, but I did have Evie in my team, so that felt like a good omen.

“Grace ought to go last if it's a relay,” Evie said. “You're always supposed to put your fastest swimmer last.”

“Well I'm not all that fast actually,” I quickly said, but no one seemed to be listening because the other three had already arranged themselves in front of me, so it went: Nicole, Evie, Holly, me.

Looking at the team in the next lane I noticed Felissia was also at the back, standing level with me, which meant that she and I would be competing against each other. But I didn't mind that at all now I was pretty sure she wasn't the one sending the messages. Bibi and Hannah were in lane one, which was the furthest away from my team, thank goodness, but my heart jittered when I saw that Hannah was also swimming last for her team.

“Everyone should swim two lengths. Those swimming first, you must do breaststroke, the girls in second place swim backstroke, those in third, freestyle, and the girls swimming last, front crawl. Got that?” said Mrs. Mellor. “Today you can choose whether you want to start in the water, or dive in from the block or just from the side. Next week we'll do proper diving technique using the blocks, in preparation for the gala, but for now, whether or not you decide to dive in, you must make sure that the person before you in your team touches the rail before you set off, and if they're doing breaststroke they must touch with both hands. Those of you in first position in your team who want to dive in, take care not to dive before my whistle, or it's a false start. If I see anyone do a false start, I'll blow the whistle repeatedly straight afterwards to tell you to start again. Right, everyone ready?” Mrs. Mellor waited for silence, then said, “On your marks…” and blew her whistle.

I was glad I wasn't going first because I would have been so worried about doing a false start that I'd have probably dived in late, which would have put the team behind straight away. But the first four girls all dived in or set off from the side perfectly on the whistle, and straight away everyone started calling out, “Come on!” to their team members, until the pool area was full of shrill noise and echoes. All four teams stayed more or less level until the second people set off. Evie was doing backstroke, but kept going off course and having to wiggle her way back into the middle of the lane, so by the time it was Holly's turn we were coming level last with Hannah's team. Holly managed to get the tiniest bit ahead of the third girl on Hannah's team so I dived in just before Hannah, but in no time at all she was ahead of me, beating her arms against the water and driving herself forwards. Half of me wanted to use every single atom of energy I possessed to try and catch up with her, but the other half of me was holding back, scared of what I might see on the computer later.

Hannah touched the side at the deep end before I went into my tumble turn, but I kicked hard off the wall and when I came up I found I'd managed to draw level with her, and that was when my competitive spirit suddenly flooded in and made me determined to beat her. Felissia had already finished so her team had won, and I knew from Mrs. Mellor's whistles that the other teams had finished too, which just left my team and Hannah's. I flung my arms out as hard as I could with every stroke and tried to get the breathing right, though it didn't really work. Everyone was yelling out to us excitedly at the tops of their voices and even though it sounded strange and muffled with my head down, it made me try even harder. Two more strokes to go. Then one. My fingers touched the side and a single whistle sounded.

“Dead heat!” cried Mrs. Mellor. Her face was all shiny and smiling. “Well done, both of you!”

I looked across at Hannah and our eyes met. I would have definitely managed a smile if she'd given me one, but she instantly looked away and I felt the energy leaving my body. I tried to get out of the pool, but it was a struggle because my arms seemed to have totally lost their strength. Evie and the others laughed as they hauled me out, congratulating me at the same time, which made me feel better.

“Well done, Grace! You were great!”

“Like a torpedo!” said Evie, her voice raised in a high-pitched squeal.

Why did that word keep popping up? Immediately, some of my high spirits fizzled away. Mrs. Mellor snapped everyone back to attention with a shrill blast on her whistle, then made a few comments about how we'd got on. “It's not long till the gala now, girls, so we need to spend some time working on weak areas. I'll be coming round to give individual help, because every one of you here today will be swimming in the gala – some more than others. I haven't decided yet exactly which races you'll all be competing in but I'll let you know in due course.”

That was just what I needed to pull myself out of my depression, because it was exciting to imagine which races I might be entered in and I wanted to sort out my breathing for front crawl. But thinking about the gala also filled me with butterflies, and I had to work hard on my breathing technique for the rest of the session to make my nervousness go away.

Later, I told the others that swimming squad had been fine and I'd even managed to keep up with Hannah in a race over two lengths. I didn't mention the look that she and I had exchanged at the end, which should have been a smile but was actually no more than the briefest, emptiest stare.

Jess must have felt my unease. “Oh, by the way, I had the most obvious idea in the world during art club. If Georgie stops going online, then whoever it is won't bother sending any messages. Simple!” She turned her palms up and smiled round at us all.

“I don't know why we didn't think of that before!” said Naomi, grinning back at Jess. “It's true that Georgie's only got to keep out of the chat room till after the swimming gala, and everything will be fine.”

I knew I should have been happy with this idea, but it was just making me worry all the more. Seeing those horrible messages had been really upsetting, but the thought of not seeing them and wondering whether or not I was being talked about seemed ten times worse. And the worst thing of all…what if then the chat-room messages turned into real live bullying?

“Just one small thing, guys…” said Georgie. “I hate to point it out to you all, but if I'm going to be banned from using the chat room, and as I don't have a million and one things to do, like you lot, aren't I going to get a teensy bit bored?”