“So what do you think of the new girl?” Angel asks us as she twirls her long dark brown hair up into a messy bun.
Swan shrugs.
“I’m not sure it’s going to work out with Boudicca,” she says once she’s rinsed her mouth of toothpaste.
“How do you mean?” asks May-Belle, frowning under her thick black fringe.
“Well, everyone gets on here really well, even though we’re all different and obviously I’M the only normal one out of you lot,” Swan announces, ignoring our laughs and protests. “But I’m not sure if Boudicca will ever fit in. I’m not sure she WANTS to fit in…”
“Yeah, but we have to give her a chance,” I mumble as I brush. I think giving her time to settle in is fair even if so far I’ve found Boudicca trickier to understand than an extra-tricky Sudoku puzzle.
Swan gives another shrug in response as if to say all the chances in the world won’t make a difference.
“Maybe Boudicca just needs a good night’s sleep,” says Yas. “I saw Granny Viv tiptoeing out of the dorm just before I came in here so Boudicca and the Newts must’ve settled down.”
Argh… Granny Viv has left and gone downstairs already, before I could nab her for a chat? She’ll be having her dinner with the other teachers and Toshio now.
I know, I think as I rinse my toothbrush and stick it in the plastic holder. I’ll text her and see if she’ll pop up for a chat after she’s eaten…
“Night,” I say to everyone, and make my way out of the loos and back to our room, leaving Swan to follow when she’s ready.
Stepping over a drooling, dreaming Downboy again, I reach the dorm and push the door open – it’s never locked at this time of night when the Newts are safely, thankfully sleeping.
As soon as I slump down on my bunk, I grab my phone from the bedside cabinet where it’s being guarded – along with a print out of Mum’s ‘South Pole’ poem – by a plastic T rex with a bandaged tail and leg. (He’s one of the bunch of ex-toys Arch and me collected to use as “actors” in our mini-movies. T rex is still my favourite, even if he HAS been chewed by Twinkle.)
Wait a minute…
• the poem
• my T rex
• Zed’s suggestion this morning in science that I should shoot a cool new mini-movie that’ll get Arch’s attention.
WHAM! Those three thoughts crash together and turn into a BRILLIANT idea.
Here’s what I’ll do – I’ll mess around with the words of Mum’s poem and then shoot my T rex “reciting” it.
Once I have another read-through it takes no time at all to adapt.
Next I kneel by the bedside cabinet and with one hand I point my phone at my T rex.
With the other hand, I hold his tail so I can move him as he speaks.
And THIS is what he says…
‘The St Grizzle’s Poem’
Every morning I wake up
And can’t believe I’m here,
In this paradise of nuttiness
With crazy students oh so near!
The classes are bizarre,
The teachers bonkers too,
The only thing that’s missing
In this goofy place is YOU!
I press stop.
I flip my mini-movie back to the beginning and watch it through. Happy with it, I upload it to YouTube and smile. Now all I have to do is wait till Arch sees my film and—
“DANI!” shrieks Granny Viv, barging into the dorm closely followed by a now wide-awake Downboy.
I leap so much that my head misses banging the bunk above by about a squillimetre.
“What? What is it?” I squeak, her panic infectious.
Behind Granny Viv there’s a frantic pad-padding of feet as Swan and the Conkers come scurrying out of the loos and along the corridor.
“She’s gone!” Granny Viv announces, clutching her heaving chest as yet MORE girls turn up behind her. Even the sleepy-looking Otter triplets have materialized, wondering what’s happening.
“Who’s gone?” I ask.
“Boudicca! I just came up to check on her but when I put my head round the Newts’ dorm door I saw that her bed was empty. I woke them up and had them searching under every bed and in every nook and cranny but she’s not there!”
Oops. We’ve lost the new girl? Already?
“She’s not in the girls’ loos,” says Swan. “We’ve all been in there chatting.”
“Let’s go check OUR dorm,” Klara says to her dorm-mates, waving at them to follow her.
“I’ll help the triplets check THEIR room,” Yas offers.
“Can you check in here, Dani?” Granny Viv asks me.
“There’s no point,” I tell her. “I’ve been here for ages. I’d’ve noticed if Boudicca had come in.”
“Hmm… Well, we’ll have to get a search party organized,” Granny Viv announces. “Swan, hurry downstairs and tell your mum and the others what’s happened. The rest of you, let’s check the dorms, then we’ll meet up in the school hall and plan where to look next. Come on – chop, chop!”
Granny Viv claps her hands together and shoos everyone out. I try to hurry after them but get my foot tangled in my duvet and have to hop around gasping as I attempt to stop myself tumbling and breaking my fall with my face.
“Hee!”
At that tiny sound I stop dead on one leg like a startled, tartan-pyjama-wearing flamingo.
Where did it come from, that teeny-weeny hee! sound?
“ARF!”
I look round. Downboy might be fairly stupid – ninety-nine per cent stupid actually – but right now he’s using his one per cent of intelligence to give me a clue.
“ARF! ARF!!”
He’s at the bunk bed in the opposite corner to mine… Swan’s bunk. Downboy’s got his fuzzy front paws on the ladder like he’s planning on climbing up to the top bunk and settling down for the night.
Only there won’t be room for him up there – it’s already taken. And not by Swan, who’s rounding up the teachers.
Kicking myself free of the duvet, I walk towards the small mound under Swan’s duvet. As I get closer I spot a pair of grey eyes peering at me.
“Boudicca?” I say. “What are you doing? Didn’t you hear Granny Viv? Everyone’s looking for you. They think you’re missing.”
Boudicca blinks at me and bites at her lip but says nothing.
“How did you even get in here without me noticing?” I ask. “Wait a minute… Did you sneak in while me and Swan were off brushing our teeth?”
“Mmm-hmm,” comes a tiny reply.
“But why didn’t you stay with the other Newts?”
“They are too many. And they are too talky.”
Actually, when it comes to Boudicca, too many Talky Newts does NOT equal a Happy Weird Shy-Girl.
“Look, they’re just trying to be friendly,” I say in the Newts’ defence.
“But I don’t want to have friends,” I just catch Boudicca’s hard-to-hear murmurings.
With that, she flips round and faces the wall. With one finger she begins to trace round the nearest of Swan’s bird flock.
“HOWWWWW-WHOOOOOOO!” Downboy interrupts with a loud howl like he’s letting the whole school – and anyone within a ten-kilometre radius – know what, or who, he’s found.
It does the trick, and a babble of voices and thunder of feet sound as everyone who just rushed DOWN the stairs now comes rushing UP the stairs.
As a bundle of babbling staff and students pile into the dorm, I back off towards my bunk so that Lulu and Granny Viv can deal with our newest, most reluctant student.
“Emergency over – back to bed, please!” Miss Amethyst insists, shooing random Conkers, Otters and now wide-awake Newts from our room.
Since Swan can’t exactly get to HER own bed right now, she comes to join me on mine.
“What’s going on?” she whispers as we watch Lulu and Granny Viv talk kindly but earnestly with Boudicca.
“She told me that she doesn’
t want to have friends,” I reply, thinking of what Boudicca just said to me in her teeny-tiny voice. “You were right, Swan – she doesn’t WANT to fit in here.”
I’m so caught up in that thought that it takes me a second to notice the vibration alert coming from my phone.
As soon as I do I see that the rumbling buzz is letting me know that there’s a thumbs-up icon under my YouTube mini-movie.
Yes, yes, YES!
Arch is alive and – better still – online!
Like Dr Seuss in his Green Eggs and Ham poem, it seems Boudicca isn’t keen on quite a LOT of things.
She only arrived yesterday but already we all know that…
She does not like the dorm of Newts.
She does not like the eggs Gran cooks.
She does not like the pets at school,
The students, teachers or our friendly rules.
She does not like to smile or chat.
She does not like St Grizzle’s hat…
“It’s silly,” she said super-seriously when we passed the statue of St Grizelda and saw the Easter bonnet someone had tied round her stone head this morning. Or maybe Boudicca was referring to the fake ginger moustache that was stuck to her upper lip. Or the blow-up rubber swim-ring dangling round her left wrist.
But I wasn’t in the mood to explain that SILLY can be GOOD.
It was because I wasn’t in a very silly or good mood myself.
I’d been hoping that once Arch “liked” my poetic mini-movie last night everything would get back to normal. But no – Arch didn’t leave any comments or reply to the texts I sent.
It was back to silence.
Weirdly weird, not-like-Arch-at-all silence...
I’m still mumfing about that now as I attempt to stop Downboy and Twinkle from doing a four-legged maypole dance round the lamppost outside the supermarket in the village.
As I try and untangle the knot of leads, I can see some of the kids from the local school further along the pavement. They have clipboards in their hands and sniggers on their faces. And – uh-oh – guess who’s right in the middle of the sniggerers? Meanie McMeanpants Spencer, who is saying something horrible about us right now I bet, since he is the sort of person who is allergic to niceness.
The last time we saw him was at the award ceremony the council held to announce the winner of the local schools’ film project. Spencer is probably still seething about the fact that…
a) OUR film won, and
b) Granny Viv photo bombed theirs. (Go, Granny Viv, go, Granny Viv!)
“Ignore them,” says Zed, who’s spotted the village kids, too. “Let’s just head back to school. Are you nearly finished rearranging the shopping, Swan?”
“Almost,” says his sister, placing equally weighted bags on each of the handles of Zed’s wheelchair. Then she reaches inside one of the bags and grabs a few rustling somethings. “Here, catch!”
She’s calling out to the triplets and Boudicca who are hovering close by, looking a little bored by our shopping trip. That’s till four bags of crisps go sailing through the air towards them.
Tia, Tiane and Tineesha (proudly wearing their Newt-made cardboard name-necklaces) give matching squeals of excitement and lunge to grab at their treats.
Boudicca, holding on to an open copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, watches blankly as a packet of salt ’n’ vinegar lands with a flump at her feet.
We hear Spencer and his friends burst out laughing. Great.
And now he’s swaggering over towards us.
“So what are these?” he asks me, Zed and Swan, pointing at the name-necklaces we’re wearing. “Are you Grizzlers all so thick that you forget your own names?”
“We have a new girl. It’s to help her get to know us,” Zed replies in as even a voice as he can manage, while trying not to get riled by Spencer’s sneer.
“Not that it’s any of your business…” Swan mutters in a low growl.
“What – that little geek with all the hair?” snarls Spencer, ignoring Swan as he glances at Boudicca, who’s gone back to reading her book and ignoring the rest of us.
“Lovely talking to you but we’ve got to go,” Swan says sarcastically, picking up another couple of shopping bags.
“Hold on! Our school’s doing a survey,” Spencer says quickly, waving his clipboard in our faces. “Can I ask you the purpose of your visit to the village today?”
Strangely Spencer sounds almost polite when he says that last bit, which isn’t normal for him. And then I get why – his teacher is striding towards us, giving him an encouraging nod.
“Is it business or pleasure?” Spencer carries on in his fake polite voice, his pencil poised over a couple of tick boxes.
The reason for us coming to the village is neither.
Since yesterday’s failed science lesson and last night’s failed bedtime with the Newts, Lulu has had a rethink. To keep things simple she allowed Boudicca to sleep in a spare bunk in the dorm with me and Swan in the end but told us she’d like to try moving Boudicca in with the Otters’ group today. She’s hopeful it’ll suit Boudicca better, since…
• the schoolwork will be a little harder
• the dorm will be a little quieter, and
• the triplets are generally a little stranger, same as Boudicca.
And in an attempt to get them to bond, Lulu asked me, Swan and Zed to go and buy some groceries, taking the triplets and Boudicca with us.
But there’s been no bonding. On the walk along the leafy country road to get here Boudicca trotted along in silence, ignoring the triplets and the only-a-little-bit-stale marshmallows they offered her. When the triplets started playing tag in the freezer aisles of the supermarket just now, Boudicca parked herself by the cat litter and buried herself in the book she’d brought along.
“Business or pleasure,” Spencer repeats loudly, before adding under his breath. “Or just taking your pet dorks for a walk?”
He nods his head in the direction of Boudicca and the triplets.
You know, I’d quite like to grab his pencil and scribble GO AWAY! in big letters all over his stupid survey. But while Spencer might be as pleasant as a shark with bad breath, we have to keep our temper and uphold the reputation of St Grizzle’s in front of his approaching teacher.
“Well, hello! Everything fine here?” the teacher asks brightly.
“Absolutely brilliant, thanks,” says Swan, slapping a smile on her face that’s as fake as Spencer’s politeness. “But we’re expected back at school soon, so bye!”
Following her lead, me and Zed make our escape, hustling the crisp-eating triplets and the book-reading Boudicca ahead of us, dragging Downboy and Twinkle after us.
“Hey, I haven’t finished yet!” Spencer calls out.
“Tough,” Swan mutters under her breath as she reaches out and JUST manages to grab book-reading Boudicca before she and Harry Potter walk straight into the bus stop…
“So what happens if you-know-who DOESN’T fit in at St Grizzle’s?” Zed asks quietly on the journey home along the country road.
The triplets are skipping on ahead in single-file togetherness while Boudicca trundles behind us, blinking her big grey unreadable eyes whenever one of us checks on her and asks if she’s all right.
“I guess Lulu tells her parents it’s not working and they find her another tutor,” says Swan.
That suddenly makes me feel another wrench of sorry and sad for Boudicca. Being stuck at home with just a tutor and some housekeeper for company while her parents are off touring … it doesn’t seem like a shy girl’s dream to me – it sounds properly LONELY.
Suddenly I can’t bear to think of little Boudicca going back to that odd, friendless life. I should try harder to help her to settle in. I told the Newts last night that they had to be patient with her. I mean, I didn’t much like St Grizzle’s when I first arrived. The trouble was I was so MAD at Mum for sending me there that I couldn’t see how fantastic it was.
Perh
aps, in her own way, Boudicca is cross with her parents.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps it’ll take quite a while for St Grizzle’s and its goofy charms to win over this strange girl…
I turn to check on her again – and suddenly see that Boudicca has frozen. She’s standing stock-still, her eyes staring straight at me.
For the first time she has an expression I understand: ALARM.
I’m about to ask, “What? What’s wrong?” when I hear The Thing that’s caught her attention.
Actually, we’ve ALL come to a stop as a strange collection of noises come from behind the hedge on the other side of the quiet road.
There’s a lot of scrabbling.
Rustles and crackles.
A sort of panting sigh.
By the time I hear a growling, gasping cry, my heart is thudda-dudda-dudding in alarm.
“ARF! ARF! ARF!” goes Downboy, yanking hard on his lead.
Glancing round at Zed, Swan and the triplets, I can tell we’re all a nanosecond away from one of us yelling, “Run!”
But then Boudicca makes a surprisingly dramatic sound for her.
“EEEEEEEK!”
She points and we stare.
Stare at a WILD-EYED MONSTER emerging from the hedge!
OK, so it’s more of a WILD-EYED PERSON.
A WILD-EYED BOY, actually.
The wild-eyed boy locks eyes with me for a second before my dog pulls the lead from my hand and rushes over to POUNCE on him.
“Woah! Ha! Get down, Downboy,” laughs a voice I know so well.
And before I know it, I’m running over to pounce on Arch, too…
St Grizzle's School for Girls, Geeks and Tag-along Zombies Page 4
