Chapter 4 #2
Arriving now isn’t the least bit like coming back after the summer holidays when all the corridors are crowded with pupils, their luggage, and confused-looking parents. My academic year might only be starting now, but everyone else has been back for yonks. And nobody’s here to meet me.
OK, apart from Ms. Barnett. She rushes out of her office when she catches sight of me and gives me a big hug.
Of course she’d be here too, moved over from the west wing with everyone else.
Mr. Acevedo, the lower-sixth boys’ houseparent, has moved up a floor to keep an eye on the upper sixth too—Mr. Tanner is now needed elsewhere with the younger lads.
Ms. Barnett gives me a serious look. “It’s lovely to have you back with us, Olive.”
Maybe the one advantage of being back in the lower sixth is still having her as houseparent. Although it comes to the same thing either way this year. All the sixth-form girls are on this floor, so we all have the same houseparent: Ms. Barnett. Ms. Kelleher is now looking after the second form.
Ms. Barnett asks me how I am and I reel off my pat answers. I’m getting there, thank you. Aye, it’s been tough. I’m glad to be back too.
None of which is true. I’m not getting there.
It wasn’t tough; it was hell. And I’m not glad.
I’m overwhelmed, furious, and powerless, because there’s no explanation.
No guilty party. Nobody I can blame for my life having been turned upside down.
But I don’t say that because people can’t deal with it if you’re honest with them.
And I don’t need sympathy, and I certainly don’t need special treatment. But obviously I get those anyway.
Ms. Barnett tells me I’ve been given the last remaining single room with the rest of the lower sixth.
It’s the door nearest the stairs. I should probably say thank you for this thoughtfulness, but I’m too angry.
Although I’m genuinely relieved to be closest to the exit and not at the far end of the long corridor like my old room was.
It’s just so humiliating to be like this now.
Clearly, I don’t have to do the morning run.
And I don’t have to do games or lessons that clash with my physio sessions in Ebrington.
I’ve been kicked off A-level PE—my favorite subject—and now I’m doing Spanish.
Mr. Acevedo, who taught me for GCSE, says he’s happy to give me extra tutoring to help me catch up.
Nod, thank you, nod, thank you. Then Ms. Barnett finally hands me my key.
“You know where I am if you need anything, Olive,” she says, letting me go at last. “Anything at all.”
I nod, pressing my lips together, and head for my room. My things have already been brought over from the west wing. I open the door and nearly die of shock.
“Welcome back!” Tori yells as Sinclair hoots a party blower. Emma and Henry are throwing confetti, and I’m frozen in the doorway, like a block of ice.
“What are you doing here?” I gasp once I’ve recovered from the surprise.
“Waiting for you, of course,” Tori replies, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
She smiles and Sinclair grins, pointing to a cake on the desk.
It’s iced with Welcome Back, Livy. I’m not sure exactly which part of that makes my eyes well up, but it doesn’t matter.
Since the fire, I haven’t felt like myself.
There are still days when I’m so thin-skinned, I’m crying constantly, and others when I’m too numb to feel a thing. I don’t know which I prefer.
“Don’t cry,” whispers Grace as she hugs me.
I nod and wipe away the tears. That’s only too easy as I put my arms around her and feel her hard shoulder blades.
This isn’t the moment to confront Grace with the thing that’s been giving me bellyache for a few weeks now.
Weeks . . . Months more like. When she visited me in hospital, I saw how much weight she’d lost. The first few times she came, I was too out of it to notice, but once I was recovered enough to take little walks around the ward, Grace could no longer hide it, however massive the jumpers and cardies she was wearing.
Even now, the sight of her scares me, because her cheeks are so sunken and her eyes so deep in their sockets.
Grace stares at the floor like she’s read my mind.
She pulls her cardigan tighter and steps back a bit so the others can hug me too.
Gideon’s eyes meet mine, then rest on Grace. Tori flings her arms around me.
My throat constricts again as she hugs me tight. It messes with your head when everyone treats you like you’re made of extrabreakable glass. Tori doesn’t. The others do, though. I can understand why.
Maybe I should be glad of that. After all the hugging and saying hi to Emma, Sinclair, Henry, and Gideon, my shoulder’s aching.
Standing up is tiring, and by the time I sit on my unmade bed, I’m feeling a wee bit dizzy.
Everyone else sits as best they can, dotted around the room, on the desk chair, the desk, the chest of drawers, the floor.
A roomful of my friends, yet it feels like there’s an eternity between us. I gulp.
“Have you guys heard?” I ask, when nobody speaks.
Grace is sitting next to me, and she puts an arm around me. Henry clears his throat and nods. “Mrs. Sinclair told me there would be two new arrivals in the lower sixth on Monday. I’m supposed to greet you in my role as school captain.”
“Two?” I ask in surprise.
Henry nods.
“You and some American guy,” Sinclair replies for him. “He’s going to be sharing my room.”
“Your room? I thought they were keeping the forms together?”
“There was nowhere else for him to go,” says Sinclair. “The rest of the lower sixth are already sharing, and the rooms aren’t big enough to squeeze anyone else in. And it wasn’t exactly fair for me to be the only guy with a room to himself.”
“I’ll gladly swap with you,” Henry murmurs, barely audibly, but Gideon hears and punches him. “Heeeey!” Henry rubs his forearm in mock outrage.
“You know I’m the best roommate anyone could wish for,” Gideon says. “Statement of fact.”
“Everyone has to snuggle up a bit,” says Tori, with a shrug. “It’s kind of cozy.”
“That’s one word for it,” Emma mumbles, taking refuge in Henry’s arms as Tori kicks out. “Hey!” She sounds just like Henry did. I smile, rather against my will, then remember what Sinclair was saying.
“So this new lad . . . Is he here already?”
Sinclair shrugs. “I didn’t see him before dinner, but he might have arrived by now. Let’s hope he’s chilled.”
“If he’s starting this far into term, you can bet he’s been in some shit,” Gideon remarks.
“Didn’t your mum say anything about him?” Tori asks Sinclair curiously.
“No, you know her, the model of discretion.”
“Aye, right, how could I forget?”
“She seems to know his mum, though. Think she must have owed her one. She doesn’t normally take anyone partway through a year. And if she does, as an exception, they’d start after Christmas or at Easter.”
“So I guess I can count myself lucky I’m not the only newbie crashing halfway through term,” I muse sarcastically.
“So that’s settled then?” The suppressed hope in Tori’s voice nearly tips me over the edge. “You’re repeating the lower sixth.”
I swallow. “They didn’t give me much choice.”
“But surely your parents understand that you’d rather . . .”
“Tori,” says Grace quietly.
“No, I’m not having it, OK?” Tori looks like she’s about to jump up, but Sinclair puts his hand on her knee. “Livy belongs with us. We need to do our A levels together.”
“Mum and Dad don’t see it that way,” I mutter. “And neither does Mrs. Sinclair.”
Tori turns to Sinclair. “Talk to your mum.”
“I don’t think she’d take kindly to me interfering,” he says.
“But it’s our last year together.” Tori turns back to me. Her voice is so choked up that I’m fighting back tears myself.
You. Will. Not. Cry.
Not again.
But it’s so bloody hard being in a room with your favorite people when you have to face the fact that everything’s going to change.
Everything. It was finally perfect. I’d patched things up with Tori, she’d got together with Sinclair, Emma had accepted my apology, we’d put on our performance of Romeo and Juliet, and we’d fought for greater equality at school.
And then Fate came along and battered me over the head.
“We’ll all still be here,” Grace says quietly. I’m sure she means well, but it’s only making things worse. “Won’t we, Tori?”
She nods cautiously. “At least we’re all on the same floor. I’m just next door.”
I blink. “Great.”
“We’ll see each other here in the wing, at mealtimes, at midnight parties. It’ll only be classes where it’s different, but that’s not the end of the world.”
Don’t make me laugh.
“Everything will be the same really,” Tori promises.
I shut my eyes. If the last few months have taught me anything, it’s that nothing stays the same. Nothing at all. Especially not if you wish for it with everything you’ve got.
Colin
A closet. A tiny hole with shabby furniture and they have the nerve to call it a room.
I couldn’t believe my ears at the meeting with the head when Mr. Acevedo, who was introduced as my houseparent, our resident adviser here in the dorm wing, said that I have to share it with somebody else.
This has to be a sick joke, but Mom doesn’t even bat an eyelid when I turn to her.
“Nope, not a chance,” I say once Mr. Acevedo gives us a bit of space. “No way am I staying here if I don’t even get my own room.”
“You’ll deal with it.” Mom glances at her smartwatch. I know what’s coming before she even speaks. Even so, my gut churns as she looks up. “I can’t leave the car waiting any longer. Want to come back down?”