The Emerald Forge (Pilgrennon's Children) (12 page)

As she made her way into the front yard and up the steps to the main building and the door where she’d encountered the wyvern, she overheard a conversation between two boys:

“You see that? Abigail Swift broke it.”

“A
girl
punched that and
broke
it?”

“Ya, and when she got wrong for it, she said a dragon broke it. Ha!”

“Psycho bitch!”

If the news had got out and people were talking about her, Abigail must really be angry. Dana looked around the crowded school grounds, although it wouldn’t be now or here Abigail would choose to attack her. It would be during break in the toilets, or after school. Maybe she could come up with a way to escape early for the next three times. She hurried past the crowd on the steps and into the building. The corridor with packed with students waiting to go into their registration group classrooms.

“Dana?”

Dana started at the sound of someone shouting her name, but it was only Mr Kell, pushing his way to her through the throng.

“Dana, could I just have a quick word with you in private?” he shouted over the noise the children were making.

He pushed open the door to his science classroom and waved her through. The door clicked shut behind him, muting the racket from the corridor.

“Abigail Swift earned herself a temporary suspension by breaking the door last night. She won’t be back at school until the start of the next academic year.”

Dana stared at the axolotl where it lurked on the stones flooring its tank, feeling enormously relieved that she would likely not set eyes on Abigail’s stupid face for three days and six weeks at least, but not wanting to say anything that might betray the wyvern or her own guilt.

Mr Kell continued. “Over the summer holidays there are probably going to be a number of educational reform topics coming up for referendum. The Meritocracy might finally come up with some coherent arguments from all this background noise of conflicting ideals, and the Electorate might at last have some clear-cut options to choose from. August will be a fresh page for everyone.”

Perhaps Mr Kell thought the school system would be seriously reformed. Maybe he even thought Dana wouldn’t be coming back to this place at all? There had not been any referenda yet on school reform, because when people nominated school issues, they complained about so many different aspects of it rather than all focusing on one point as a start of reform that there were never enough votes for any individual referendum on any of the school topics to be carried through. More recently, influential people on the Internet had started to talk about a grammar school system where people would go to different schools depending on their strongest subjects. If Dana did get to go to a science school, it wouldn’t mean
no
bullies, but it might mean significantly less bullying. Most of the bullies who targeted Dana seemed to be kids who were bad at science and maths. Or perhaps it wouldn’t work at all, and bullies existed in some kind of equilibrium, and if you removed the bullies, more tolerant children would
mutate
to replace them.

“In the meantime, if anything, or anyone, is bothering you, I want you to let one of the teachers know. It doesn’t have to be me. It can be a woman teacher if that feels easier for you. It doesn’t have to be your registration group teacher or your head of house. Any teacher you like. Will you do that, please?”

“Okay.” Dana nodded.

“Good. You’d better get off to your registration group.” Mr Kell opened the door again for Dana. Going back into the clamour and crowded mass of bodies was like diving into a fast-flowing river and trying to swim through the rapids. The corridors were a sea of heads, riptides flowing in opposite directions and whirlpools in the stairwells where they surged up to the higher floors. The law in the school was that you had to walk on the left side of the corridor. Dana had always wondered if it was intended to prepare the students for learning to drive when they got to seventeen. Graeme was always saying that schools didn’t teach kids anything applicable to life in the real world.

A bigger boy clipped her shoulder and spun her into the opposite current. Dana lost her footing and people swore and shoved into her, but someone’s clammy fingers closed on her wrist and spun her back onto the other side. She caught sight of Eric’s face obscured by acne and glasses, grinning, before the current bore it away.

It wasn’t until after he’d gone that Dana realised a slip of paper had been put in her hand. Rather than risk reading it in the corridor, she put it in her pocket and continued to her registration class.

In registration, Dana always sat in a seat next to the wall, and nobody sat next to her because everyone knew Dana Provine got bullied, and being seen to associate with her in public was a sure way to invite bullying on oneself. She put her bag on the other seat and opened the note on her lap under the table. It contained only the instruction ‘after school’ and an address. Dana checked the postcode on GPS. It was easily within walking distance of Pauline and Graeme’s house.

Even though it was only Wednesday, Dana suddenly felt overwhelmingly positive. Abigail had been suspended, in three days’ time, school would be over, and she had what she supposed was a friend, which Pauline would be happy about. Yesterday she had found a wyvern, and Osric had sworn not to harm it, and Jananin might still get in touch with her because of that. Ivor might be alive somewhere, and it was summer. And she had the whole six weeks ahead to spend at Pauline and Graeme’s house enjoying the best weather of the year in peace, constructing her bog garden with Graeme and making ice creams with Pauline and eating them on the lawn. Duncan would be home for the University holidays, and he had promised to take Dana to go camping one weekend in Devon, where there were fossils and a beach made entirely of shells. She would get to spend time with Cale during the day, when he wasn’t engrossed in his own thoughts from being exhausted by interacting with people at the special school he went to. And while they were all out or otherwise occupied, she could make Airfix models and try to dig up more information about Ivor and the wyvern.

Dana’s good mood carried her through registration and the morning’s lessons, protecting her like a bubble of insulating atmosphere from various insults and rude comments in the corridor. Indeed, it didn’t even break when, while queuing in the corridor to go into the school canteen for lunch, a hawking, retching, spitting noise came from someone behind her, and something damp and rubbery hit her in the back of the head.

There was a lot of laughter and noise, but Dana had always been told to ignore bullies, so she stood and pretended she didn’t notice, resisting the temptation to raise her hand to the back of her hair. She bought her food, found an empty table, and ate, conspicuous of a damp sweaty sensation between the base of her skull and her collar.

In the lavatory, she used a handful of toilet paper to grab hold of the thing and drag it out. It was impossible to do it without pulling it down the entire length of the hair it had stuck to the roots of, a gluey tension resisting all the way. When it at last broke free, it left a dirty off-white clag smelling faintly of spearmint in the toilet paper. Chewing gum: the same material stuck under every desk and forming revolting beige and grungy pink pustules in every corner and every surface of the school, making the building look as though it was infested with some kind of fungus. She tried to rub it out with more toilet paper, but the residue of it left the hair at the back of her head in a coagulated tacky wad that felt stiff when she touched it.

The afternoon’s lessons passed without much event. Upon the last bell, she dashed out of the classroom and through the main doors, and ran to the school gates. She took the quickest route back to Pauline and Graeme’s house, and as soon as she got there, she ran upstairs without checking to see if anyone else was there. Dana threw her bag and blazer on the bed, pulled off her school trousers and replaced them with her jeans, and unbuttoned her shirt and threw it on the floor as she went from her bedroom to the bathroom. She could sense Cale’s signal nearby, and from his bedroom came the tuneless sounds of him bashing at his music keyboard.

A hairbrush and comb lay beside the sink. She grabbed the brush, wet it under the tap, and raked at the back of her hair with it. The chewing gum had by now dried into a hard crust, and all the brush did was stick and hurt.

Pauline’s soft tread on the stairs. “Dana, is that you?”

She stepped into the doorway and noticed at once Dana’s hand over her shoulder, the hairbrush knotted up at the back of her head.

“Oh, honestly, Dana!”

“It wasn’t me!” Dana objected. “I didn’t spit it on myself!”

Pauline took the hairbrush and hurled it into the wastepaper basket on the landing. She did it in rather an exaggerated, melodramatic fashion. She began to pick at Dana’s hair with the comb. “The disgusting, filthy swine!” she exclaimed.

“Ow!”

“I’m sorry, love, I don’t know how on Earth we’re going to get this out.”

“Can I go to Eric’s house for dinner?”

“Oh, I suppose so. It’s a good thing Graeme’s going out with his friends from work for dinner tonight. I don’t think he approves.” Pauline exhaled. “Dana, look, you’re not having trouble at school, are you? That girl, Abigail, didn’t do this, did she?”

“No, she got expelled — I mean temporarily,” Dana quickly corrected. “She broke a window at the school.”

“Yes, well she’s going to end up in Borstal, that one. Perhaps we could iron it.”

Dana didn’t want Pauline to iron her hair. She just wanted to get to Eric’s house so they could work out what they were going to do about Osric and the wyvern. “I don’t mind, really.”

“Yes, well you might not, but I’m not having people think I let you not mind! Don’t move from that spot!”

She went into Duncan’s bedroom, leaving Dana alone in the doorway between the bathroom and the landing. Dana heard her switch on the computer and type some things. After a moment, she came back out and walked straight past Dana and downstairs. When she came back, she was carrying a jar of peanut butter. Pauline towed Dana over to the bath by her elbow. “Lean over the side.”

“Can’t you just cut the hair that’s manky off?” Dana protested as Pauline slathered a dollop onto the back of her head.

“Then it’ll be shorter than the rest and it’ll look even worse.” Pauline kneaded the peanut butter and chewing gum mixture into Dana’s scalp, the pressure of it hurting her chest against the side of the bath. She unhooked the showerhead and switched the shower on. The water managed to get down the back of the vest top Dana had been wearing under her school shirt, and because she was leaning forward the water ran constantly in her eyes and down her nose. When the peanut butter dissolved in the water and ran into the bath, it looked like vomit and made her feel queasy. Pauline ended up washing her hair three times, first of all in the shampoo Dana normally used, then using Pauline’s own expensive and smelly shampoo that was made in France, and then using Graeme’s anti-dandruff supermarket’s own brand that stank of tar, on the premise that men’s shampoo might be ‘stronger’.

After she had finished, Pauline dried Dana’s hair with her high-powered hairdryer, which was supposed to make ions that are good for your hair. Dana had once asked Mr Kell in a Physics lesson about the ions that came out of the hairdryer, and Mr Kell said he thought they sounded like a load of nonsense made up to sell more hairdriers.

“Where are you meeting Eric?” Pauline asked as Dana was putting on a check shirt to stop her shoulders getting burnt in the afternoon sun.

“Just at his house, I think.” Dana checked her pockets, making sure she had her fuses and Ivor’s watch.

“Well, I hope one of his parents is there. Here, take this.” Pauline handed her the mobile phone she’d had yesterday. “And be back by nine.”

Out on the street, the sun was very hot, and Dana’s wet back was something of a relief. She never liked visiting other people’s houses, and she felt even more uncomfortable because her hair was all frizzy and full of static electricity from being washed too much and blow dried, and she couldn’t escape the smell of Pauline’s shampoo.

This was where the postcode Eric had given her was according to GPS, a quiet street and a semi-detached house of bland 70s design with a tall silver birch in an otherwise desolate front garden. Weeds sprouted from the cracks between the slabs on the driveway, an old-fashioned design with a strip of gravel in the centre, and the full west sun beat down on a buckled garage door with peeling canary-yellow paint.

It was only now she was here that it occurred to her the whole thing might be a trick, and either nothing or something worse would come of it. Not long ago there had been a girl at school Dana had sat next to who had pretended to be her friend, and kept making arrangements to meet her for lunch or out of school and not turning up. Pauline had said, vehemently when she found out, that the girl probably thought it was funny, on account of being a stupid idiot with only half a brain who wouldn’t know a funny joke if it jumped out and bit her on the backside.

This was the same Eric she’d solved Cerberus’s puzzles with back on Roareim. Surely he wouldn’t do stuff like that? He’d seemed very genuine yesterday, but on the other hand, Dana probably had no idea what genuine was compared to what wasn’t. Perhaps she wouldn’t know genuine if it jumped out and bit her on the backside, the same as Pauline said stupid people don’t know humour.

A gate at the side of the garage scraped open. Eric peered surreptitiously through the gap. “Hey. Come in.”

Dana crossed the drive and went in through the gate Eric held open for her. Perhaps he was her friend, and it felt good that he might be, and to be welcome, but she didn’t want to trust that feeling too much just in case it should turn out to be an elaborate trap.

They entered the house through the back door, into an utility room smelling of cat, and indeed there were bowls containing water and little coloured biscuit shapes for the cat to eat on a plastic mat in one corner. Eric showed her to a second door, that led down a step into the garage. However, it didn’t contain a car, or a load of gardening paraphernalia and junk like most people’s garages did, although Eric’s moped was propped up by the large metal door. There was a sofa against one wall with a darts board on the brick above it and an old CRT telly with a computer console opposite, and a chest freezer against the back wall. Scattered about the rest of the place were boxes of toys, fold-up chairs, an electric guitar and its amp, and dismantled computers and bits.