“Mum?” Oz insisted.
“Yes, yes, I know you’re right, it’s just…it’s so difficult to believe that she’d do such a terrible thing.”
“Promise me you’ll not let her move in, Mum. Please?”
Mrs Chambers nodded. “I’ll speak to her tomorrow. I promise.”
But she didn’t look at him when she spoke, and Oz got the distinct feeling that it was not a task she was looking forward to with any relish.
The following morning, Oz, Ellie, and Ruff turned up to school with the minimum of schoolbooks but with backpacks stuffed to bursting point. Concentration on the morning’s lessons was even more difficult than usual, and the minutes dragged by until break, when they finally hurried over to the science lab to line up. Not even Ruff could manage canteen toast and jam this morning.
It was a nervous group of pupils that dutifully donned their lab coats and shuffled in to take their places and await their fate. Skelton emerged from the prep room behind the desk, looking enormously pleased with himself. He wore a snazzy check shirt today, his teeth pearly white in the beams of light slanting through the windows. He stood watching the class, listening to its buzz with a satisfied smile, and for once, he didn’t have to ask them to settle down. He’d even put on a formal black academic gown so as to add to the occasion.
“Settle down, settle down. I can see that you’re all eager to find out just who is going on our field trip.” He produced a very cheesy grin. “I’ll try not to make too much of a drama out of this, but it is a bit like The X Factor final, isn’t it?”
“Not too much of a drama? Pull the other one,” muttered a pale Ruff out of the side of his mouth to Oz.
“Skelton looks like the Phantom of the Opera in that gown,” Oz said.
“Don’t tell me he’s going to start singing,” muttered Ellie.
Skelton was beaming and making damping movements with both hands to quell the polite titters from those who felt obliged to laugh at his little joke. “To put you all out of your misery, what I will do is read out the names of the remaining qualifiers immediately. As you will all know by now, seven places remain out of the twenty.2C will therefore contribute more scholars than any other class, and you should all be proud of that.”
Another expectant buzz droned around the laboratory.
“Before we add the final seven, it goes without saying that one place goes to Niko Piotrowski, winner of the year eight science prize. And although it is old news, I think he deserves yet another round of applause.”
Everyone clapped politely, and Niko, his face bright red, raised an acknowledging hand and allowed an uncomfortable smile to split his face. It struck Oz then that he hadn’t seen Niko smiling a lot lately. But he had no time to dwell on that realisation, as Skelton began speaking again.
“In fourth place, with an average score of eighty-five percent, is Sarah Shipwright…”
Oz listened, his pulse hammering in his temples as Skelton went slowly through the list. The next four places went to all the usual suspects: Marcus Skyrme, Dilpak Malhotra, Hannah Louden, and Brionie Ogilvie. That left just three more.
“Ranked number fourteen in the year with eighty percent, Ellie Messenger.” There was another polite round of clapping while Ellie nodded at Skelton and gave Oz a wan smile of reassurance.
“Ranked seventeenth with seventy-nine percent average, Oscar Chambers,” Skelton said, sounding more like a bingo caller with every passing minute. Oz didn’t care. The relief flooding through him was like fire in his veins. Still, his pulse hammered. One place left, and there were still some pretty smart people whose names had not been called out.
“And so we come to the last spot, ranked nineteenth in the year…” Skelton paused, letting the tension build. Inside his head, Oz was screaming, Get on with it, you gonk.
“Squeezing in with an excellent last score of nineteen and a half out of twenty in the final exam is…”
Come on. Come on.
“Lindsay Trueman,” Skelton announced with relish, and beamed at a bespectacled, mousy girl two rows behind Oz. They all swivelled around to stare at her. She looked like a small gerbil who’d just seen something huge, baring a great many teeth, jump out from behind a tree.
“Sugar,” said Ellie, and immediately put her hand over her mouth. It was obvious she’d been thinking out loud.
“Well done, Lindsay,” Skelton said, and started clapping.
Lindsay Truman, however, did not look at all pleased. Her hand went up to her mouth, but not before a strange animalistic squeak, sounding a lot like a decent imitation of gerbil terror, erupted from it. But Oz hardly noticed any of this. He was too busy struggling to swallow the large ball of bitter disappointment that rushed up into his throat from his chest and threatened to gag him.
Not wanting to for one moment, but knowing he had to, Oz looked across. Ruff’s eyes were shut, and his expression was frozen into one of confused disbelief. Ellie too looked like she’d just seen lightning strike and was waiting for the inevitable crash of thunder that came with it. Her head was down and her face was a mask of horrified shock. There were other groans of disappointment from around the room, many inevitable, some desperate. No one spoke because there was nothing to say. Meanwhile, Skelton was offering condolences in his own inimitable way.
“For those of you who didn’t make the trip this time, remember that failure is merely the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” He stuck out his chest and smiled.
Oz was staring at him dully, only half-listening. They had failed. Despite Soph’s best efforts, they had failed to get Ruff enough marks to beat the others. If only he’d told them about his situation earlier. If only he hadn’t been so stubborn and…well, Ruff-like. Oz shook his head. Finding someone to blame was, he knew, not useful, but he couldn’t help it. Waves of “what ifs” and “if onlys” kept washing through his head, not allowing him to think about anything else.
“Now, about today,” Skelton continued enthusiastically, but his triumphant, irritating grin faltered momentarily as he noticed a raised hand. “May I just suggest that any questions you have are kept until the end of my announcements about this afternoon’s travel arrangements,” he said pompously. “Now, as I was saying…”
Oz kept his gaze to the front and away from Ruff and saw Skelton exhale in irritation again, his eyes flicking up to the back rows. Oz swivelled on his stool to see meek Lindsay Truman with her hand resolutely up.
“Since you seem incapable of holding on for another two minutes, Lindsay, we’d better hear what you have to say,” Skelton said irritably.
“Please sir,” squeaked Lindsay. “I can’t go, sir. I…I…I’m going to my cousin’s wedding in Portugal, sir.”
Skelton frowned. It was obvious that he was having difficulty understanding why anyone would prefer to go to their cousin’s wedding rather than on a year eight field trip to Cornwall, but then his brows cleared.
“Portugal, you say? Well, we all have to make sacrifices, eh?” he chortled, but shook his head in a way that clearly indicated he thought Lindsay Truman was making a big mistake. “Okay, well, that means…” He turned and walked to his desk to consult a large ledger. “That means,” he muttered again, “that I can now offer Lindsay’s place to the twenty-first-ranking pupil. Ah, and I’m glad to say that said pupil is also a member of 2C. With seventy-eight point four-five percent average and a full twenty out of twenty in his last exam, that person is…” He looked up at the expectant faces, once again dragging out the suspense like the very worst of the talent shows that Oz couldn’t stand watching on TV.”…Rufus Adams.”
Ruff—whose mouth had transformed from a downturned glum into an open oval of shocked delight—made a fist, pumped the air, and hissed a triumphant “Yessss.”
“You have no plans for weddings in exotic places, I take it, Rufus?” Skelton said.
“No, sir,” Ruff shook his head vehemently.
“Splendid. Then it’s welcome aboard.�
��
“Buzzard,” Ruff said.
Oz grinned, Ellie grinned, and Ruff smiled a smile bright enough to light up a small bungalow. Oz wanted desperately to talk but had to sit through Skelton going over the trip details. Eventually, after five long minutes that seemed more like thirty, it came to an end. “So, I suggest anyone with any questions come up to the front, where I will be happy to answer them.”
There was an immediate shuffling of stools, and a handful of pupils made for Skelton’s desk, leaving the others to their own devices.
The volume of noise in the classroom crescendoed in ten seconds flat.
“Talk quietly, please,” ordered Skelton.
Oz leaned over towards Ellie and Ruff and shook his head.
“Close call,” he said.
“Too close,” Ruff mumbled.
“I thought I was going to pass out when he read out Lindsay’s name.” Ellie shook her head.
Oz nodded, and suddenly there was an odd glint in his eye that was nothing to do with relief. “Pancakes all round, then,” he said.
“Yeah,” Ruff agreed.
“Pancakes, indeed,” Ellie added.
It was, even for them, quite an odd turn of phrase, given that lunch was a good hour away, and it wasn’t Pancake Day, and therefore the chance of pancakes being on the menu was almost nonexistent. But then, for all anyone listening might know, pancakes could have been Oz, Ellie, and Ruff’s favourite treat. It wasn’t, of course. “Pancakes” was simply the word they’d chosen as their code word when they’d discussed their plans the day before. Oz looked at the others and then at the monogrammed lab coats they were all wearing.
“Right, I remembered something else out about McClelland yesterday,” he said slowly.
“Really?” Ruff said, trying to sound mildly interested.
“Yeah,” Oz said. “Just before he got lost on the Black Mountains, he went on a trip to Italy.”
“Oh?” Ellie said in her best curious voice.
“It was in a letter he wrote to my dad. He wanted to visit some abandoned monastery and some old churches on a mountain called Subasio near Assisi. He knew we’d been there and wanted some tips.”
“And your point is?” Ellie asked.
“It’s pretty out of the way, is my point,” Oz said.
“I still don’t follow,” Ellie went on.
“Don’t be such a gonk, Ellie,” Ruff said. “Be a great place to hide a ceramic ring, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, wow. You really think so?” Ellie asked.
“Good a place as any,” Oz said. “I don’t think many people go there.”
“Shame we can’t go out there,” Ellie said.
“I’m working on my mum to take us out there this summer…”
Skelton’s voice broke up their conversation. “Quiet, please. Could all those of you now coming on the field trip come to the front so that I can make sure you all have the required research materials and final details? The rest of you can get on with some reading.”
The remainder of the lesson was spent huddled around Skelton’s desk, listening to him explain about fossil layers and tidal pools on the Cornish beach they were going to visit. He sounded terribly enthusiastic. All through the talk, Oz studiously kept his eyes away from Ruff’s for fear of giggling at his triumphant smirk. When the bell went for lunch, Oz quickly took off his lab coat and hung it on a peg near the door. He waited until the three of them were well away from the room before he spoke.
“Think they’ll buy it?”
“Totally,” Ruff said. “Sounds like exactly the sort of weird stuff archaeological history students would do. Mount Subasio, though? What black hole of geography trivia did that come from?”
“From four summers ago, when I spent a month walking all over it with my mum and dad. There’s this Saint Francis of Assisi trail…” Oz shook his head. “Let’s just say I know it quite well, and there are miles of paths through woods and loads of old churches and stuff. It would take someone days, maybe even weeks, to find them all.”
“Brilliant,” said Ruff, with a grin.
“But what about the rest of the plan?” Ellie asked.
“I’m leaving all that up to Soph,” Oz said.
Ruff started to protest. “But how is she going to convince—”
“Shh,” Ellie said as a group of year tens passed close by. “Remember what we said. No discussion here in school. It’s too risky.”
Ruff frowned but nodded grudgingly.
Oz glanced at his watch. “Let’s just trust Soph. We all know what she’s capable of,” he said. Although he meant it, even as he said the words, from somewhere inside his guts he felt a ginormous swooping sensation, as a battalion of fluttery insects lifted off.
Chapter 17
The Dead Zone
At the end of that school day, while everyone else trooped off to their buses, the Cornish field trip party congregated in the hall. Skelton read out an equipment checklist—resulting in a couple of anguished groans when eating utensils and toilet paper were mentioned—and then gave everyone permission to go to the shops, with a warning to be back at four forty-five PM sharp. Ellie, Ruff, and Oz joined the other excited members of the group as they walked to a nearby Tesco, where everyone stocked up on sandwiches, crisps, various drinks, and a few other essentials. Ellie went for Jelly Babies, Oz bought a six-pack of Mars bars, and Ruff bought Jelly Babies, Mars bars, and a half-pound bag of sticky rubbish from the pick and mix.
At five PM, everyone was sitting expectantly on the minibus. Everyone except Miss Ladrop, of whom there had been no sign. At five past five, a red Ford Fiesta zoomed into the car park and screeched to a halt. A woman in a very warm-looking padded jacket and a beanie hat got out and began hauling bags from the boot.
“That’s not Miss Ladrop,” Ellie said, squinting through the minibus’ steamed-up windows.
“You’re right. That’s Hippie Arkwright,” Ruff said.
Twenty seconds later, Miss Arkwright was standing at the front of the bus, her face red from rushing, wearing an expression that was an unhappy mixture of resignation and frustration.
“Where’s Miss Ladrop, miss?” said someone from the middle of the bus.
“Are you coming instead, miss?” demanded someone else.
“Close to a toilet and yes, in that order,” Miss Arkwright replied, shoving her bag under her seat with a bit more effort than was strictly necessary. “Miss Swinson rang me as I was on my way home to tell me that Miss Ladrop was in bed with galloping gastroenteritis.”
“The what, miss?” asked someone.
“The squits,” Miss Arkwright replied.
There was a collective “uuuuggghhh” from the bus.
“She looked okay at lunchtime when that van turned up with a delivery of Krispy Kreme donuts for her, miss,” a 2A boy said.
“Really?” Miss Arkwright said, with an air of grim suspicion.
“Yeah.I heard the man say they were ‘from a fan.’ She ate most of them during our lesson, miss. Kept going to the back cupboard for felt pens, but each time she did, she came back with a bit of icing sugar on her nose.”
“Well, she’s gone and overdone it with a vengeance, it seems. And since I’m the only other female member of staff with resuscitation training, it was either me or cancel the trip.”
“Aw, thanks, miss,” said Dilpak.
“Yeah, thanks, miss,” echoed half a dozen other voices, including Oz’s.
Ellie leaned over and poked Oz with an elbow. “Skelton looks like he’s won the lottery,” she said.
Miss Arkwright gave Mr Skelton, who was indeed grinning broadly, a curt nod of acknowledgement before sitting down, and by a quarter past five they were at last on the Seabourne ring road, heading south towards the M4. Oz and Ruff had bagged one of the back seats with Ellie and Bernice Halpin, a nervous, talkative girl who happened to play in the netball team with Ellie, sitting next to her near the window. Ellie and Ruff had aisle seats, which would have me
ant more leg room, except the aisle was almost nonexistent, piled high as it was with bits of luggage and boxes of essentials like water and geological hammers. The roof, too, had been piled with bags and covered with a khaki tarpaulin held down by thick bungee cords. Anyone seeing them pass by were left in no doubt at all that this was a no-messing, serious field trip.
Skelton’s plan, as explained to them in the hall, was to get halfway and then stop for supper. Oz, Ellie, and Ruff had made a pact of silence until then, but it was clearly preying on Ellie’s mind.
“But what’s supposed to happen after the service station?” Ellie hissed, leaning over to fiddle with her bag so that she could whisper to Oz.
“We have a plan,” Oz said, trying to sound confident. The fact was.he didn’t really know himself. He’d just explained to Soph what he wanted to happen, and she had glowed a bit and said simply, “Request understood.”
With the exception of Niko, who sat next to Miss Arkwright behind Mr Skelton, the rest of the 2C contingent clustered at the back, and they spent their time listening to the tinny radio, plugged in to their own iPods, or lost in handheld game consoles. All in all, they were a satisfied bunch; the buzz of excitement that had fizzed around the hall before leaving was now just a low background hum. They discussed prising fossils out of cliff walls, and someone dared someone else to go skinny-dipping in the sea. Once, Oz heard mention of the scene between Mrs Williams and “that weird woman with the red hair” at last night’s concert, but since no one except Ellie, Ruff, and him knew who the Cuckoo really was, the topic died mercifully quickly. Mostly it was the usual year eight banter, and Oz was glad they were more concerned with Madame Chang’s homework, or what Mr Gingell was going to do for a week without Miss Arkwright, than with tonseldeberry juice.
At ten past seven, they pulled into the service station. Skelton, stooping under the minibus’ low roof, stood at the front to address them.
“Right, thirty minutes here, please. Everyone make sure they use the loo before coming back on, because there will be no more stopping until we reach Cornwall. That means three hours on the bus.” He held up a finger. “We leave at seven forty-five on the dot, and we are not waiting for anyone.”
The Beast of Seabourne Page 27
