“Welcome back,” Miss Rutherford said, taking centre stage. “I hope you have all had a good Christmas holiday.”
Mine had been horrible. It had been the worst Christmas since Mum left. Even when Da tried to make an effort, things had gone all wrong. The turkey had been all burnt and the Christmas pudding had gone soggy in the middle. Pipi ended up eating more of it then I did. And even when we gave each other presents it had been a disaster. Grandpa ended up eating all his chocolate liqueurs at once and falling asleep for the rest of the afternoon and all of the evening. The gold necklace Da gave me ended up getting tangled up in my hair and the star pendant got pulled off the chain. But I hadn’t cared because I was sure Da was going to love my present. I had made him an amazing model ship, with real rigging and tiny sailor figures. But Da had opened his present the wrong way up and the ship had fallen out of the box. The mast snapped in half and all the little sailors fell off. We had glued the pieces back together, but when it dried it didn’t look quite right. It was like me and Da. No matter how I tried to fix things there were all these invisible cracks that couldn’t be mended.
“In this new academic term we have many things to look forward to. And looking ahead to the end of the year we have our big summer assembly. A chance to celebrate our accomplishments with teachers and parents. I know many of you like to have the opportunity to take part in this assembly, so teachers from each class and year group will submit a number of names to be drawn at random. So in order to have plenty of time for you to plan your speeches, dances, art exhibits and musical numbers, we will be picking our year group class representatives today,” Miss Rutherford said as she clapped her bony hands together to usher forth Mr Todd carrying a box with Assembly Readers printed on front of it.
I groaned – there were six year groups and dozens of classes. This was going to take for ever.
“The year seven English Lit class representative will be Chloe Baines,” Miss Rutherford read out.
Chloe got up and Blair and the other ponytail gang all whooped. Everyone joined in clapping and Mr Norris, our English teacher, leant over and gave Chloe an excited handshake like she had won the Olympics.
“The year seven art representative will be Ted Smith.”
A nervous boy with a very round face got up. I was a little bit surprised it wasn’t Tom. But then Tom hadn’t always listened to Miss Iris. He had drawn his self-portrait like he was a superhero when we were meant to be drawing a real likeness of ourselves from photos. He’d given himself a mask and everything. Miss Iris hadn’t been pleased.
“The year seven representative from Miss Archibald’s STAR group will be…” Miss Rutherford continued unfolding the rest of the paper.
I waited for Miss Rutherford to read Ian or Gregory’s name out.
“Amelia McLeod.”
The whole assembly turned to face me. Everyone knew who I was after Blair’s efforts to get the whole school spying on me and Tom.
“Well, get up then,” the girl next to me hissed.
I stumbled to my feet. There was a ripple of whispers and then a smattering of polite applause. I sat down again wondering what had just happened. Miss Archibald had told our class we could volunteer and I definitely hadn’t put my name in the goldfish bowl. Had she decided to put my name forward anyway? And why would she? She knew I struggled with reading and she knew it was even harder for me when I had to do it in front of people. I suddenly felt very dizzy.
It wasn’t long until I found out what had happened. Blair, Chloe and the rest of the ponytail gang were all waiting for me outside the hall. They all looked smug, except Chloe who mouthed “Sorry” at me.
“Congratulations, Amelia. Oh, I hope you didn’t mind me putting your name in. I knew you would be too shy to volunteer, so I did it for you,” Blair said, giving me a smile that made her look like a satisfied toad.
I tried to walk away. I was determined not to show Blair how upset I was. But she wasn’t having any of it.
“Aren’t you going to thank me?” she said, putting an arm around my shoulder like we were best mates. “My mum says it’s always best to face our fears. And I know what you’re afraid of most of all, and that’s reading in front of people. You’re so terrible at it.” Blair smirked.
Blair wasn’t wrong. Even after all the terrifying things that had happened with the disappearing, the thought of having to read out in front of people made me feel sick to my stomach.
“I’ve seen you in class, mouthing all your words, having Miss Archibald help you sound things out. Having to use your special coloured sheets and then still stuttering and spluttering all over the place when you try and read aloud. Just imagine doing that on stage with the whole school laughing at you. Enough to make anyone want to vanish. But especially you, right? Because you’re the girl that disappears, aren’t you?” Blair said, tightening her arm around me.
“Blair Watson!” I heard Miss Archibald shout from behind us. “What are you and your friends doing?”
Blair turned her grip on my shoulder to a hearty pat.
“I was just congratulating our class reader Miss,” Blair said, switching to her sugary sweet little girl voice.
Over the tops of her glasses, Miss Archibald narrowed her eyes.
“Your hair looks nice today. Doesn’t it, girls?” Blair said, managing to keep a straight face as she twisted the purple bow at the end of her perfect braid.
The ponytail gang all smirked at Miss Archibald’s frizzy bird’s nest.
“All right, enough!” Miss Archibald snapped. “Get off to your class before I give you all detention.”
Blair walked off with Chloe and the rest of her cronies. All of them walked perfectly in step, their purple bows bobbing up and down together, before they disappeared around the corner, leaving me and Miss Archibald alone.
“Amelia, did you really put your name up for the assembly? Because it doesn’t seem like something you would do. So I was wondering if there was something you wanted to tell me?” Miss Archibald asked.
For just a moment I wanted to tell Miss Archibald everything, but I couldn’t. Every time I tried to tell somebody the truth before, everything went wrong. I told all my secrets to Tom and he’d betrayed me. I tried to tell Da the truth and I’d only made him more angry, and I had tried to tell my mum how much I missed her, but ended up driving her away. So I just shook my head.
“Amelia, I know you haven’t had the easiest transition into school life. But I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t want to lose such a bright intellect from Bridlebaine. So I do hope you feel you can come to me with any problems,” Miss Archibald said, putting a hand gently on my shoulder. “No matter how unusual…” she added, giving me the same curious look she had given me back in Miss Rutherford’s office.
I stared at my feet. I felt that if I looked up at her I would burst into a million tears.
“All right, Amelia. I won’t keep you,” Miss Archibald sighed.
I just managed to make it to the girls’ loos before I was flooded by a tsunami of tears.
“Amelia,” I heard Tom’s voice as the bathroom door flew open.
“Go away!” I yelled, slamming the toilet door and locking it.
“What happened in assembly, why did your name get picked out to read?” Tom asked, trying to peep at me from under the door.
“It’s none of your business, not after what you did!”
“I know what I did was awful. I should have told the truth. I should have stuck up for you,” Tom said. “But I got scared. I was terrified my parents would ground me again. But worse: I got scared my gran would sell the ponies just like she said she would. I love those ponies, Amelia – I didn’t know what else to do.”
I sniffed.
“I shouldn’t have done it. But I’ve got something to make it up to you.”
I wondered if Tom had kept his promise, if he had used his sleuthing skills to find where my mum was living now. So when Tom slid the book of myths from Mr Sinclair’s shop
under the toilet door, my heart sank.
“I’ve been helping Mr Sinclair all Christmas. He made me do the most awful stuff, like set mouse traps and clean spiderwebs off the high shelves and alphabetize all the romance books. But just after Christmas we started reordering the books in the secret bit behind the red curtain and I was able to smuggle the myth book out. So now we can give back your wish and transfer your scary powers back to the Serpent’s Tooth Rock and save the island!” Tom finished breathlessly.
But I didn’t care about giving back my powers and saving the island. Because Da had been wrong, I wasn’t a proper islander, I didn’t belong on a cold dark island where I was the stupid kid with no friends. I was Amelia Hester McLeod, named after two great pioneering explorers. And I belonged with my mum, fighting crocodiles down the Amazon, or riding camels through the desert, or even dodging polar bears in the arctic.
I slid the book back under the toilet door. Because Blair was right: I was the girl who disappeared and it was time I started acting like it.
Chapter 26
That night I felt the tingling in my hand grow stronger. It was like I had summoned my powers back. All I needed to do was figure out how to get them to make me disappear again and I was sure that they would fulfil my wish: I would get to be with Mum. I couldn’t sleep thinking about it, so I pulled out the blue exercise book from my bag.
I turned to a fresh page and wrote:
Dear Mum,
Here are all the things we are going to do when we live together.
•Go camping out in Africa like Mary Henrietta Kingsley. (This time I promise not to be scared of snakes.)
•Sail around the world in a real ship hopping from island to island and finding all kinds of treasure like the pirate Anne Bonny.
•Conquer Mount Everest against all the odds, just like Junko Tabei.
•Fly across the world like Amelia Earhart.
•Travel across the desert by Arab stallion like Lady Hester Stanhope.
The rest of the week of school crawled by. Tom kept trying to find ways to talk to me and Blair continued to stalk me in the hallways. But Da was starting to make a bit more effort. He even made me frittata for dinner again. But my mind was made up. When the weekend came, I was going to disappear again, and this time off this island for good.
But by Saturday Grandpa was having another of his funny mornings. He’d been in the living room, sitting in the big old-fashioned green armchair and repeating,
“Oh dear, oh dear.”
I suspected he was thinking about more unlikely ways he could pop his clogs. But when I asked him what the matter was, he muttered, “Things need to be put right, if only I could remember how they did it last time.”
I had no idea who “they” were, so I made us both a cup of tea and fetched him Da’s not-so-secret stash of ginger biscuits from under the sink.
“It’s a horrible thing, getting old, Amelia. I hardly think it’s worth the bother any more,” Grandpa said.
“Grandpa, I know you’re going to live to a hundred so you can get your letter from the queen,” I said, passing Grandpa his mug of tea.
“You’re very special, Amelia, you know that?” Grandpa said, as he brushed my knotty hair out of my eyes.
I frowned and stared down at the toe sticking out from the hole in my sock. I didn’t think I was particularly special. I wasn’t good at school or popular and seemed to do nothing but disappoint Da.
“Your grandma would be so proud of you,” Grandpa added.
A wave of sadness crashed over me. I held the biscuit I’d dunked in my tea a moment too long, and it fell apart into the mug.
“How about you and me play a game of chess then?” Grandpa asked, wiggling in the armchair so he could pull his trousers up over his belly, before he got up, went over to the desk and pulled out the chess set he’d made me for my ninth birthday.
Grandpa’s brilliant at making things but he’s never been any good at playing chess, even before he got so forgetful. He calls the knight the horsey and both of us would abandon the rules halfway through. We’d just end up throwing the pieces at each other whilst yelling “bombs away”. It’s much more fun than normal chess. But even so, I couldn’t stay. I felt the tingling in my hand calling me. I kissed him on top of his bald head and made for the stairs. If I went to live with Mum, Da would have more time to look after Grandpa, I thought. But it didn’t untie the knot in my stomach.
I could hear Da rattling around upstairs. If I stayed in my room there was every possibility he would pop in to check I was doing my homework. I couldn’t risk him seeing me in the middle of my great disappearing act. So I tiptoed out into the corridor that led to the attic room. I stepped carefully on to the attic stairs, testing each one to find the non-squeaky bit, so as not to alert Da. But it was no good. No matter how careful I was, the stairs still creaked with every painfully slow footstep.
Squeak…
Squeak…
Squeak!
When I was halfway up, I heard the sound of Da’s bedroom door flying open. I froze and my heart started to thump heavily. Then I heard it close, so I darted up the few remaining steps and turned the handle into the attic room.
The attic room was just as Mum left it. There was a large wooden bed still made up with the fresh sheets, a wardrobe filled with a few of her shirts and dresses and an old Japanese tea chest filled with her books: lots of biographies of terribly important people, travel books and romance books with embarrassing titles. Under the beams at the end of the room was a big round window that looked out to the sea. When I was little Mum and I had watched for Da’s boat out of the window… It was a beautiful room. But me and Da never used it for anything, because every corner of it still felt so full of Mum. It was surely the perfect place to try and summon the disappearing to take me to her.
I squeezed my hand, closed my eyes and whispered: “I want to disappear…”
I heard a rustle and the door creaked open. My heart jumped. But it was just Pipi. She had followed me up, her tail between her legs. Whatever I was doing, she was already sure she didn’t like it.
“I want to disappear,” I said again, closing my eyes.
I waited for the room to flicker and for the sound of the pop in my ear, but all I could hear was the roar of the wind outside.
“I want to disappear,” I said again, stretching my arms out as if I was about to take flight.
But still nothing happened. Pipi looked up at me with her head half cocked.
Woof! she barked.
Even she thought I looked stupid.
I sat down on the end of my bed trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. I had only been able to deliberately make the disappearing work twice. Once in the bookshop and once when Miss Archibald and Tom were chasing after me at school. And even back then I hadn’t known how I was doing it, it just sort of happened. Maybe if I looked at all the things I had found it would help me? Over Christmas I had moved them up to the attic. I felt like they belonged in Mum’s room with all the things she had left behind in her old tea trunk. One by one I pulled them out:
•The binoculars I found on Sometimes Island
•The fossil that Da donated to the “Wonders of the Island” school display case
•The pirate flag I found in The Bonny
•The piece of sea-worn glass that I found in Puffin Cave
Finally, I pulled out Mum’s compass. The cracked glass glinted and the broken needle wouldn’t move from pointing south. But it didn’t matter, because Mum’s initials were still untouched on the back of the gold case. I ran my finger over them and remembered how I had made myself disappear at school. I hadn’t just wished to disappear; I’d been thinking about Mum first.
“Take me to Mum,” I whispered and my hand grew hotter and the needle on the compass started to spin.
“It’s working!” I gasped.
There was a rumble of thunder. The sky turned white with lightning and then everything fell into darkness. I th
ought of my broken promise to Tom and the inky dark stormy drawings in the pages of the book. But I couldn’t stop now.
“Take me to Mum,” I said again and the needle flew faster.
Pipi growled deep in her throat. But I wouldn’t stop, I couldn’t.
“Take me to Mum!” I roared.
The room flickered, Pipi howled, and then everything went wrong.
Chapter 27
A lot of things happened next. Firstly, there was an almighty crack of thunder that rocked the whole house. Secondly, Pipi bit me. Not just a nip, or a nibble but a proper sinking of her teeth into my ankle.
“Ow!” I yelled over the roll of thunder.
But Pipi wouldn’t let go. She was trying to stop me disappearing by any means possible. I tried to pull her off. But it was too late, my foot disappeared. And then my leg and my torso and then my ears popped. And I was gone.
When my eyes snapped open, I was lying face down on attic floorboards. I groaned. I hadn’t gone anywhere. Pipi had interrupted the magic and caused the disappearing to halt.
“You’re a bad dog, a very bad dog,” I told her, while turning over and rubbing my sore ankle.
But as I sat up I could see everything was different. I was definitely in an attic, but it wasn’t my attic. My heart leaped with excitement. Maybe this was the attic of the place where Mum lived; maybe the magic had finally brought me to her.
“Mum!” I called out wildly.
But nobody answered and as I looked around this seemed less and less like a place my Mum might live. All around me were piles and piles of old newspapers, cracked mirrors, bits of what looked like old bicycle parts, and old furniture. And the walls were covered in frames filled with butterflies and insects and creepy crawlies. I sat up shakily and knocked over a dusty lamp.
“Did you hear something?” a voice from downstairs called.
“Probably owls again trying to make a nest in all that junk you keep up there,” another voice replied.
Lightning Chase Me Home Page 12
