Glimpse (3 page)

‘Liz.’

Susie set off through the teeming corridors, and I followed. For a moment, everything felt incredibly surreal; familiar and alien at the same time. Automatically, my head lowered and my gaze dropped to the floor, but I caught myself in time and pulled both higher. As far as anyone here knew, I was as normal as they were, I reminded myself.

‘Did you just move here, or something?’ Susie looked back over her shoulder at me as we climbed a flight of stairs.

‘Yes, on Saturday.’ I picked up my pace to catch up with her.

A boy coming down the stairs the other way nearly barrelled into me. He stopped short with a tsk of annoyance. ‘Sorry,’ I blustered.

Susie reached back and caught my satchel strap, tugging me to the side. ‘Keep to the left. School rule.’ She pushed through some double doors at the top of the stairs. We entered a corridor of classrooms. Groups of students chatted by the lockers. Susie wound between them.

‘I saw you coming from the Highwayman Inn this morning.’ Her voice held an open question.

I grimaced internally. I knew I couldn’t keep my new home a secret – not the way I planned to keep some other facts a secret – but it was a definite flaw in my plan to seem normal. The Highwayman Inn was not a normal house. Derek would have loved that.

Susie stopped outside a door with a fresh, white ‘12G’ painted on the wood. She looked at me expectantly.

I felt for the familiar shape of my locket. ‘Um, yeah,’ I said. ‘The inn belonged to my granddad, but he died a few months ago and left it to us.’

Her face lit up with genuine glee. ‘Oh my God, you live there? You own it?’

I nodded, and couldn’t help beaming back at her in relief.

‘That is so cool!’ Susie exclaimed. ‘We went on an English trip there in year seven. We were studying that highwayman poem, you know?’

I nodded – I knew. Derek would have loved that too; I had moved into an inn famous for inspiring an old poem about ghosts. Derek had always told everyone that I was crazy, that I thought I saw ghosts. I wasn’t sure what my Glimpses were, but if they were ghosts (dear God, I hoped not) they definitely weren’t romantic spirits like in that poem.

Doesn’t matter any more, I reminded myself. I’d left the Glimpses behind.

I tuned back into Susie’s gushing.

‘You’re going to get so much attention from the English teachers,’ she was saying. ‘You noticed the highwayman statue in the school car park, right?’

I nodded again.

‘If you live at the inn, does that mean you’ve got your own bar? Does your bedroom have chandeliers?’

I nodded. Shook my head. ‘There’s a bar. But no chandeliers.’

‘It’s got to be haunted.’ She bit her lip with glee.

I stopped smiling. ‘No.’ The word came out too hard, too serious, but Susie was already turning away, and I hoped she hadn’t noticed.

‘See you on the bus, yeah?’ She disappeared into the crush.

‘Thanks!’ I called after her, a moment too late.

I tugged hard on my necklace, trying to regain my composure. Susie thought the inn was cool, she knew nothing about me; everything was fine.

I peered into room 12G through the glass panel in the door. Compared to the first-day-back excitement in the corridors, it looked an oasis of calm. A man with a grey beard – 12G’s form teacher, I guessed – pored over a pile of papers at his desk. The rest of the room was empty, chairs stacked neatly behind freshly polished tables. From the few maps and flags pinned to the walls, I guessed 12G was a Geography room.

Teachers were one of the few things about school that didn’t bother me – a good thing considering the number of extra classes I’d had to attend over the years – so I tapped on the glass and went in.

The man looked up. Before either of us could speak, the bell rang. The classroom door crashed open behind me. Students burst through the door like sprinters crossing the start line of a race.

‘You must be Elizabeth Rathamore,’ the teacher called, over the stampeding of feet and the scraping of chairs. ‘I’m Mr Scholars. I’ll catch up with you at break. I’ve had some notes through from your old school, from a Miss Mahoney.’

I nodded, my heart sinking. Of course my old school would send my notes through. But I’d still hoped they’d forget.

I joined the rush to find a chair. Most had already been filled. This was a crucial moment – I knew from experience that being stuck in the wrong seat could spell a year’s worth of misery, especially when it came to picking partners for group work. At Jameson Secondary I’d had no choice but to sit on my own; I refused to let that happen again.

I made a beeline for a large table at the back of the room that had free spaces. ‘Can I sit here?’

The four boys and two girls who’d claimed the rest of the table glanced up at me. One of the girls nodded. I slipped into one of the two empty chairs. I hoped someone would take the empty seat next to me, but when they didn’t, I put my bag on it, so it would look like I’d meant it to be that way.

‘You moved into that inn, didn’t you? I saw you on the bus.’

I looked up to see my nearest neighbour, a girl in a bright pink top, looking at me expectantly. Her words had grabbed the attention of the rest of my table, and suddenly, I had an audience.

I smiled my best my-house-may-be-freaky-but-I’m-not smile. ‘That’s me.’

‘Quiet, 12G!’ Mr Scholars roared. I closed my eyes in a brief moment of relief as the gazes at my table slid away from me. ‘So Elizabeth – heiress of the Highwayman Inn, no less – come up to the front and introduce yourself.’

A jolt of adrenaline killed my relief.

‘Don’t worry, I’m not an English teacher. I won’t quiz you on the poem.’ Mr Scholars grinned beneath his moustache.

I blinked back at him. At least I knew now that he hadn’t read Miss Mahoney’s notes. He wouldn’t be asking me to do this if he had.

I reached down to straighten a dress I wasn’t wearing – I still wasn’t used to jeans – and squirmed my way up to the front of the room.

I scanned the faces in front of me. No one looked particularly hostile. No one was laughing. No one was sneering at my clothes. Still, it was impossible not to feel a familiar panic.

‘Hi.’ I lifted a hand in an awkward wave. ‘I’m Liz. Short for Elizabeth.’ I gave Mr Scholars a pleading look.
Enough?

‘And what subjects are you taking?’ he asked, oblivious to my discomfort.

‘English, History, Art, General Studies.’

‘An arts girl, eh? None of my classes. Who here does some of those subjects and would like to show Liz around?’

Long seconds passed with a distinct lack of hands being raised. The invisible gas ring under my chin started clicking. Any moment now and I’d burn up.

‘Sarah, you take History don’t you?’ Mr Scholars said. He fixed his eyes on a girl in the front row, who started opening and closing her mouth like a fish.

‘And James, you take Art?’

A hand shot up at the back of the room. It was the pink top girl from my table. ‘I’ll show her,’ she called.

‘Thank you, Katie,’ Mr Scholars said.

The classroom door flew open and bounced against the wall with a bang, making me jump. Chair legs scraped against the floor as every student in the room turned round, startled. A frazzled-looking teacher marched into the room towards me and Mr Scholars. I took my chance to dart around her and back to the safety of my seat, glad not to be the centre of attention any more.

‘Mr Scholars!’ the woman screeched behind me. ‘I cannot do it. I’m sick of him already and the school year’s barely started.’

I buried my head in my bag, pretending to retrieve a pen that had fallen from my pencil case, and took a calming breath.

The room fell silent.

‘Miss Webb,’ said Mr Scholars, trying – unsuccessfully – to be discreet. ‘We promised his father we’d give him another chance. There’s a procedure. Verbal warnings, then written warnings, then—’

‘I don’t care!’ Miss Webb’s voice went up another decibel.

Katie winced and stuck her fingers in her ears.

‘I’m not suffering another year of this. He’s completely destroyed my seating arrangements already, he causes chaos wherever I put him.’

There were sniggers now, quiet ones. Katie unstuck her fingers, leaned towards me and whispered, ‘Miss Webb’s one of the History teachers. I’ll show you where the History block is later, if you like.’

I sought for my smile muscles and mouthed a grateful, ‘Thanks.’

‘I’m sending him to you,’ Miss Webb continued behind me. ‘You can deal with him this year, Mr Scholars. I’ve had enough!’

The door banged again as she flounced out of the room. Giggles spread around the class.

‘Class 12G, settle down.’ Mr Scholars sounded tired. ‘Apparently, we’re going to have two new students this year. Elizabeth Rathamore and Scott Crowley.’

There was a collective groan. Even I wasn’t paranoid enough to think it was over me.

I vaguely registered the sound of the classroom door opening again as Katie leaned back towards me, her eyes sparkling. ‘Scott, right, he’s—’

Thunk. My bag plummeted from the chair next to me and onto the floor.

‘Scott Crowley!’ Mr Scholars bellowed.

My eyes drew level with a fashionably sagging waistband, then moved up to take in a grin, the silver glint of an eyebrow ring, and white-blond hair. Scott – I assumed – was tipping the chair where my bag had been at a forty-five-degree angle. When I met his eyes his expression twisted in a double-take.

‘Kicked out of class before the school year’s even started. Disgraceful. Sit down this minute!’

Scott didn’t flinch, just smirked down at me, his eyes not leaving mine. ‘Oops, was that your bag?’ he said, with mock innocence. ‘You must be the new girl. Sorry about that.’

Mr Scholars marched over to our table and folded his arms. ‘Show over yet, Scott?’

‘Carry on, sir.’ Scott sat down next to me in a cloud of aftershave. For a moment I was transported right back to my old school, to Derek hanging over me, laughing through a fugue of cheap-smelling chemicals.

Scott made a show of picking my bag off the floor and returning it to me, his leg bumping mine as he did so. I took the bag, my fingers numb. I hoped I was succeeding in keeping my face blank.

This boy wasn’t Derek, I told myself. I wasn’t the Liz I’d been six weeks ago. And everything was going to fine.

Thunder rolled outside the windows, making the whole class groan again. I kept my face neutral, and turned my eyes on the teacher, away from Scott.

As Dad was so fond of telling me, there was a time when I hadn’t needed to try to be normal. I just was.

Not that he used that word. Adults – teachers, doctors – shied away from saying ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal’ around me, like the blunt truth would hurt my feelings. Instead, Dad told me I ‘wasn’t always so socially troubled’. I think that was a phrase he’d picked up from Dr Roberts.

I had to take his word for it, but the old photos he trundled out now and then – the ones with Mum in their own separate pile, so I wouldn’t come across one unexpectedly and get upset (read: so Dad wouldn’t get upset) – did seem to back him up.

‘You were such a happy child,’ he’d say, as though by pointing it out he could magic me back into that grinning little girl who was the exact opposite of everything I was now.

There I was in the photos, surrounded by hordes of friends at my fifth birthday party, taking riding lessons with my then best friend at age eight, winning the egg-and-spoon race at the school sports day at age nine. It was only the last seven years that had been tricky.

Rain poured off my umbrella. I followed the long brick wall that marked the front boundary of the inn’s land, turned at the entrance to the driveway, and took one last look down the road. The Highwayman Inn was the last building before Hulbourn turned to farmland, so the few kids from the bus who’d followed me had already disappeared inside the chocolate-box cottages.

A stream of students walked, or ran, shrieking, if they didn’t have raincoats, in the opposite direction from me, towards the village centre. I could just make out Susie, a slim black blob holding hands with a taller, wider black blob. A dark umbrella that made me think of bat wings curved over the top of them.

Susie had smiled at me on the bus journey home. Relief slunk in my belly at the thought of it.

Other than my encounter with Susie, though, my day hadn’t been perfect in the ‘Get friends’ department. After Scott arrived in 12G, Katie and the others had turned subtly away from my end of the table, their noses wrinkling like they’d smelled something sour. Katie had flashed the occasional glance my way, but they’d kept conversation between themselves.

It was more Scott’s fault than mine – none of them knew anything about me yet – but it had paved the way for Old Liz to slip back. Countless times I’d had to consciously un-slouch my shoulders, stop chewing the inside of my lips, lift my gaze from the desk, release my locket from my iron grip.

Tomorrow, I’d make more effort. Tomorrow, maybe I’d find a seat that wasn’t near Scott.

I crunched through the inn’s open metal gates and into the wide driveway. The Highwayman loomed ahead of me, as huge and unfriendly-looking as when I’d first seen it in person two days ago. The dark sky and sheets of rain were the perfect backdrop. I almost forgot about school for a moment as I took in the dark, dripping woods to my left (now mine, I realized with a jolt of disbelief), the wide, sodden lawn to my right (mine), the sprawling inn (mine), with its peeling white paint and countless small dark windows that reminded me of spider eyes; the outbuildings (mine) that sloped from the side of the inn and merged into the woods.

Mine. Such a little word – and either it was one of the most exciting in the dictionary, or one of the most terrifying. The inn wasn’t legally mine till I was eighteen, but Granddad had still left it to me. I was like a modern-day Cinderella, Miss Mahoney had said – poor little girl turning rich at the wave of a magic wand. (Or, as I’d thought in silent rebuke, more like the poor little girl benefiting from the heart attack of the grandfather she couldn’t remember meeting.)