Eventually the class ends and Mr Bosenak tells us to go for lunch. I hope all the classes here aren’t this boring. No wonder everyone is dead. If they weren’t, they’d probably all die of boredom anyway.
Caydi and Clare go off together. I thought they might ask me to eat lunch with them but they don’t.
I’m just about to go and sulk in a quiet corner of the canteen when Anthony grabs my arm.
“Want to get lunch?” he asks.
“Oh,” I say, surprised. I thought that he might want to avoid me at all costs. “Yeah, sure.” Because sitting with the school loser is better than sitting on my own and being the school loser. It’s not like Sophie or any of the crowd back home are going to see me here.
“That was boring,” Anthony says as we walk over to the canteen. It’s strange how the walk is one we know so well and yet it’s so different.
“I thought you liked all that boring junk. You know, chemistry, maths, physics, laws of the universe, etc.”
“I like stuff that’s useful,” he says. “Not stuff that’s just a teacher standing there telling you all the things you’re not allowed to do.”
“Hopefully there’s a different class that tells you all the stuff you are allowed to do. There are certainly some weird things on the curriculum here.”
“No kidding.”
“I want to know what the point of Ghost Laws is,” I say. “I mean, if there is a chance we get to go back home, which I assume there is because that guy just spent two hours telling us all the stuff we can’t do when we get there, then why? What is the point of going home if you’re not actually allowed to contact the people there?”
Anthony shrugs. “What’s on your schedule for this afternoon?”
“Free,” I say. “Although I bet I can’t actually go anywhere or do anything interesting, so I may as well be in class.”
Anthony laughs at that.
“What about you?” I ask him.
“I have science class,” he says. “It’s an optional extra. Don’t you think that sounds interesting?”
“Of course you’re taking extra classes,” I mutter. “I never thought I’d say this, but I would give anything for a normal science lesson with exploding frogs and leaky gas taps.”
“I think this is exciting,” Anthony says.
“You would. Don’t you even care that you’re dead?”
He shrugs. “I didn’t really have a lot to live for.”
That makes me stop in my tracks and look at him.
“I know it’s different for you,” he says. “You ruled your own little world, you had everything a girl could want, and you loved it. But me on the other hand… I lived with my grandma, who I love to bits but her health isn’t what it used to be, bless her. I had no discernible friends and the best thing to look forward to was a maths lesson where a certain girl and her friends would almost always steal my glasses or my homework or my bag or my pencil case or something else that would make me look bad.”
“Sorry,” I say, but it sounds insincere even though I really do feel bad about teasing Anthony so much.
“What about the future?” I ask him. “What about what you were going to become? Doesn’t that bother you?”
He shrugs again. “Just because I’m good at maths and science doesn’t mean that I could afford a decent college or university.”
“But there are scholarships. There are ways to get around these things.”
He just gives me a blank look.
The first thing I notice as we walk in the canteen door is the quiet. In our canteen at home, lunchtime is like walking into a zoo. Except that wild animals are far more civilised. Here, there is almost complete silence. It’s like being in a library. There are no Year Nines screaming insults at each other. No Year Sevens throwing food at each other or running with precariously overloaded trays. There are just groups of a few people at each table, sitting down and talking normally to each other.
I glance around and wave to Caydi when I see her sitting with Clare and a few other Goth-looking girls.
Anthony and I take our place in the food queue.
I see the woman with horns from the back of the line and wave to her. She is still working alone. It’s lunchtime rush and there isn’t another person in the entire kitchen area. This strikes me as beyond strange. In our old school, there are two cooks and at least ten dinner ladies.
She smiles and waves back to me.
“Don’t tell me you made friends with the demon,” Anthony whispers.
“She’s not a demon,” I say. “Actually I don’t know, maybe she is. But she’s nice. She gave me croissants for breakfast.”
He laughs at that.
“What?” I ask.
“You won’t be seen within ten feet of the maths geek but you don’t mind chattering away with the resident demon lady.”
“It’s not like that,” I go to protest but we’ve reached the front of the line.
Another thing that’s surprising. In our old canteen, you’re looking at a good twenty-minute wait if you need to get to the main counter. That’s why it’s good to have a few people willing to go for you if you happen to be like Sophie and me. But seriously, what’s that old saying? Too many cooks spoil the broth? Apparently, because with only one person in the kitchen things move a lot quicker than with twelve.
“Hello again, my love,” the horned woman greets me.
“Hi.” I smile at her. “This is my friend, Anthony.”
She smiles as she greets him too. “How nice to see you making friends already.”
“Oh no, we came together,” I say.
“Oh, how unusual.” She smiles again. “What’ll it be, my loves?”
I shrug. “What do you have?”
“Anything you want,” she says with a wink. “Especially for you.”
“Well, what’s on offer? Back at home they have a selection of three things and you have to pick the one that looks least like it’s going to poison you.”
She laughs and I’m sure her horns redden in colour as she does.
“We have no such limitations here. Just pick whatever you want.”
“Out of what?” Anthony asks.
“Your head,” the woman says. “What would you have for lunch on a normal day?”
“A turkey burger,” he replies. “Or sometimes a sandwich I bring from home.”
“And you enjoy that?”
“There’s not exactly a lot of choice. It’s that or go hungry.”
“What’s the best lunch you’ve ever eaten? What would you really like to see on a plate in front of you right now?”
Anthony thinks about that for a moment.
“Okay, a Sunday roast,” he finally says.
The demon lady leans down behind the counter and two minutes later comes up with a huge Sunday roast, complete with chicken, roast potatoes, peas, parsnips, carrots, Yorkshire puddings, and gravy. She holds it out to Anthony.
“Bloody hell, where did that come from?” he asks.
“I told you, we are without the limitations of the physical world. Is this okay?” She pushes the plate towards him again and this time he takes it and puts it on his tray.
“It looks amazing, thank you,” he says. “I have no idea how you did that.”
“Just enjoy the food.” She smiles at him before turning to me. “And you, my dear? What’ll it be?”
I have no idea what to ask for.
“Er… I’ll have a cheese salad baguette if that’s possible,” I say.
“Brown or white bread?”
“Um, white, please.”
She reaches down under the counter and comes up with a cheese salad baguette.
“Anything to drink?” she offers.
“I’d love a cup of tea. You’re really good at making them—this morning’s one was really nice.”
“No problem,” she says and hands me a cup of tea.
“And you, Anthony?”
“Erm… Coke, please,” he replies e
ventually.
“Thanks,” I say as we go to look around for a table.
“Riley?” The horned lady puts a hand on my arm as I go to leave. “Here you go.”
She puts a tub of Ben & Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream and two spoons on my tray.
I look at it in shock.
“But… How did you…”
“Know it’s your favourite?”
I nod.
She laughs. “It’s Ben & Jerry’s cookie dough. It’s everyone’s favourite. And don’t worry, you won’t get fat so just enjoy.”
“Thank you.” I grin at her.
“I promised I’d have something special for you,” she says. “You come back anytime you want anything. I know how you girls like to comfort eat.”
I smile at her and follow Anthony.
We find a table in the corner where it doesn’t look like we’ll bother anyone and sit down.
“Well, that officially freaked me out,” he mutters.
“I like her. She’s nice to me.”
“And you don’t see anything wrong with a demon who can make food appear out of nowhere?”
I shrug as I open my cheese roll. “There’s something wrong with all of this place.”
“I can’t believe that someone like you can be decent to someone as unusual as her but you despise me because I like maths and science.”
“That’s not fair,” I protest. “I don’t despise you. Not completely, anyway. Besides, you’re different here.”
“Not different,” he says. “You just haven’t given me the time of day before because you’ve always got your minions to impress by picking on me.”
“That’s not—” I was going to deny it but maybe he has a point.
“So, we’re friends now?” he asks.
I shrug.
“You just introduced me to her as your friend.”
“Wow, nothing gets by you, does it?”
He grins and spears a roast potato.
“Okay, fine. I suppose circumstances insist that we have to be friends.”
“Well, don’t get too excited, I wouldn’t want you to strain a muscle or anything.”
“Very funny,” I say.
We eat in silence for a while.
“It must be hard for you,” Anthony says eventually.
“What?”
“This,” he says, gesturing around the cafeteria. “You had a lot to leave behind. Your friends, your boyfriend, your parents, your social standing. It must be difficult to adjust.”
“Yeah,” I admit. “It is. What about you? It must be hard for you too?”
“Like I said earlier, I didn’t exactly have a lot going for me back at home. This feels, I don’t know, right somehow.”
“It feels right to be dead?”
He nods slowly. “Yes, I think it does. I feel like I belong here. Like I’m meant to be here. Does that make sense to you?”
“No,” I say. “Well, yes and no. I know what you mean but it doesn’t feel like that to me. It feels wrong. It feels like I shouldn’t be here. Like I shouldn’t be dead and they’ve made a mistake. To be honest, I’m still not a hundred percent sure that this isn’t a big practical joke or a reality TV show.”
He laughs. “I don’t think we’re on Big Brother, Riley.”
“Seriously,” I say after a minute. “Do you think there’s something wrong with me? I mean, I don’t have the whole grey thing going on for me yet, do I? And people keep looking at me weird.”
“That’s because you are weird.”
“You’re telling me that I’m weird? You are the weirdest weirdo I’ve ever met and you think you can tell me I’m weird?”
He shrugs. “In this world, you are. Maybe you’re just not used to not fitting in.”
“Yeah, well, you can sure as hell give me some tips on that.”
“Open the ice cream then,” he says. “Demon lady didn’t give you two spoons for nothing.”
“What you said earlier,” I say as we start on the ice cream. “About not having anything to live for…”
“That bothers you, huh?”
“A little bit,” I admit. “You’re sixteen. No one that age should say things like that. You clearly have a brilliant mind, and you had your whole life ahead of you—”
“And no one gave a damn.”
“That’s not true.”
“Okay, so if I had died and you hadn’t, are you telling me that you or anyone you know would have given a toss?”
I don’t have an answer. Honestly, no. Maybe it would have freaked me out that a kid from our class had died, but Wade would have done something cruel like a celebration party to finally be rid of Anthony and everyone would have laughed about it and thought Wade was amazing.
I was a horrible person. That thought hits me like a ton of bricks. Obviously my face falls because Anthony asks me what’s wrong.
“I could have been nicer to you,” I say. “I suppose it wouldn’t have killed me to be nicer to everyone.”
“You can’t worry about that sort of thing now. What’s done is done.”
“What if this is some kind of punishment?” I say suddenly. “Some kind of karmic payback? I don’t fit in here. Suddenly I’ve become the opposite of what I was at home. What if the normal hair and skin colour, the normal pink necklace is some kind of comeuppance for how I treated people like you?”
“I doubt it,” Anthony says. “You were never that bad anyway. I heard you tell Wade to stop being cruel to me.”
“Wade crossed the line that night. He was picking on you about your family and that’s just wrong.”
Anthony shrugs. “Change of subject,” he says, smiling and pushing the ice cream tub towards me.
I try to smile back but my mind is still stuck on karma.
I was a horrible person. I picked on Anthony and others like him to make myself look cool. I’ve never seen it like that before.
“So, what are you going to do with yourself this afternoon?” he asks.
I’ve been thinking about that actually. In lieu of something interesting like shopping, Caydi says there is a normal library here with computers and Internet access.
“I’m going to do some research,” I say. “Find out exactly what this place is and what I can do to get out of here.”
It’s then that a girl walks into the canteen talking on her mobile phone.
“Oh my god, that’s it!” I grab Anthony’s hand in excitement. “Phone!”
“What?” he asks.
I’ve already flung my school bag up onto the table and am rooting through it trying to find my mobile phone. To be honest, I hadn’t even looked in this bag when it appeared on my bed, but now I’ve remembered that my phone was in here. We weren’t meant to bring phones to our old school, but I was never one to listen to the teachers, especially when important things like phones were involved. At the end of the day, if they don’t see it and you put it in silent mode, no one is any the wiser. And if a teacher does suspect you of texting in class, there are people next to you who you can just shove the phone into their laps and hold both hands up, looking innocent.
I’m so relieved when my fingers eventually clasp round its familiar sleek body that my eyes tear up.
It’s real. Real. A connection to the real world. To Wade and Sophie and my mum and dad. I can call them on this.
The nightmare is over.
I flip the phone open and am surprised to see there are no missed calls or a hundred text messages. I haven’t looked at my phone in over a day. But then again, everyone thinks I’m dead. I suppose people wouldn’t try to call a dead person, would they? But I have to get in touch with them somehow. I have to let them know that I’m not really dead. I don’t actually know what I am, but I do know that I’m stuck here and it’s not right.
I stare at the screen for a moment. To be honest, even I’m surprised to see a signal. I wouldn’t have been surprised if there wasn’t one. Who knew T-Mobile’s coverage would stretch so far?
Damn it.
I jab at the phone some more. Every name in my directory is blackened out. There are five full bars of signal, but when I press call, the no signal notice comes up.
Great.
I bet they don’t have a Nokia repair shop here.
“Who are you trying to call?” Caydi asks. She and Clare are standing next to our table.
“My boyfriend,” I say.
“Living?” Clare asks.
“Obviously.”
“You won’t get a signal,” Caydi says.
“I’ve got a signal,” I tell her. “It just won’t call out.”
“It won’t call the living world,” she explains. “The signal is the Death World signal. You can only use your phone to call people here. I’ll show you.”
She reaches down and takes my phone, punches in a few numbers, and hands it back to me. “I put my number in, try to call me.”
I scroll down my directory again and sure enough, the name “Caydi” is in full colour, in amongst all the blacked-out names.
I press call and Caydi’s phone starts ringing in her pocket.
Damn it.
“So I can’t call Wade,” I say, defeated.
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“What are you even doing trying to call the living?” Clare asks. “Didn’t you listen to a word Mr Bosenak said? You’re not supposed to contact them.”
“What does it matter?” I say. “Apparently I can’t call them, so what’s the point?”
Both girls shrug.
“Do you know of a way?” I ask suddenly. “Do you know of a way I could talk to Wade?”
“No,” Clare says abruptly. “There is no way.”
But I don’t believe her. She quickly glanced at Caydi, so quick you would have missed it if you had blinked. And she was way too abrupt. That makes me think she knows something. If they won’t tell me, then I’ll just have find out for myself.
CHAPTER 9
The library is above the main hall, just like it is in our normal school. The only person in there is a librarian, furiously stamping books behind the desk. At least that much hasn’t changed. She barely glances at me as I walk over to the row of computers on the left side of the room. The librarian continues working away behind the desk and pays no attention to me, so I sit down at the farthest computer and switch it on. No matter what some stupid Ghost Law textbook says, maybe I can email Wade. I might not be able to get a phone signal, but they can’t stop me sending an email. I hope.
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