Beautiful Freaks (34 page)

*

Thankfully
,
Sam’s class had been released early for good behaviour
. H
e stood outside the English block, car keys swinging in one hand, two paper bags containing a late lunch in the other. He greeted me like a dutiful puppy, falling into step by my side and sending the sandwiches on a perilous flight as he swung his arm around my shoulders.

“What’s up sweetie pea? You’re white as a ghost!” Sam’s voice was full of concern.

“Nothing,” I lied unconvincingly. “I think maybe I’m going down with something. Look do you mind if we rain check this evening? I need to get my head down and rest.”

I flashed him a reassuring smile but it felt like a lie. Sam made a valiant attempt at hiding his disappointment. He hated his home, not that Sam really considered it a home
. I
t was merely a place where his drunken father happened to live. At Sam’s house there was no space he could call his own. He slept on a pull out sofa bed and all his books and belongings lived either in his college bag, on the backseat of his battered mini or at my house. It couldn’t have been more different from the warm
,
eccentric home
my m
um
, Martha,
had created for me. As an illustrator of children’s books, she’d magically extend
ed
the fairytale into the fabric of our own house
, meaning it looked
part museum, part library
,
and part falling-down shack. 

Even though Sam had his own ‘glorified cupboard’ at ours, I needed space to think about how I was going to handle the arrival of a certain Mr Beldevier
.
I couldn’t do that with Sam so close. There were many girls at college
who
would find my situation crazy. Sam was attractive
;
blonde and athletic. He stopped just short of being magazine-handsome
,
but he was sparkly and good and it drew the attention of other girls to him. I’d had to put up with their jealousy throughout our time together
which
had been made more vicious because we were an unlikely couple in every way. I was quiet; he was life and soul of the Rugby club. I read; he played the drums.
I was Art and English
,
he was Maths and Physics
. In almost all ways we were our own clichéd opposite.

Judging from the quiet journey home, I guessed Sam had already felt the first shifts begin. He dropped me off outside home and leant over, placing his finger under my chin and lifting my lips to his. Usually I love
d to fall into his kiss then
afterwards
,
look deep into
his gorgeous,
sea-blue eyes. They were eyes that were soft and full of the promise of love. Tonight when I looked into them, grey shadows flicked across the violet blue
,
and I couldn’t shake the horrible feeling that a great storm of sadness was about to take hold.

2. FIRE & ICE

The morning’s lessons were slow but not slow enough; Double Art History followed by Biology. I didn’t even know why I was taking Biology. It had seemed like a good idea at the time and as it was the one subject that Sam and I took together, I hadn’t found a good enough reason for chucking it in. But even though slow, I couldn’t escape the inevitability of lunchtime coming
,
and after lunch my English lesson.

By the time Sam and I made it to the canteen, the others had managed to grab a table before the
uniform wearing
locusts descended. Daisy and Joe had their heads together in deep conversation about the upcoming ski-trip and although not an official pair like Sara and Matt, it was obvious to all of us, apart from them, that they were made for each other.

Daisy however, was currently wasting her time on a guy from Falmouth Art College who Sam and I had met once, and instantly disliked. We recognised a creep when we saw one. Sadly Daisy was besotted with him and spent most of her lessons staring out of the window doodling love hearts with their initials entwined in them. I’d found it hard to hide my disapproval and general urge to puke.

Sara and Matt had been together over a year and because Matt was Sam’s best friend, we at first tolerated Sara and had since, in a funny and unlikely kind of way, come to like her. Although completely different in almost everyway to Daisy and me, who’d been friends since primary school, Sara added
a certain
glamour to our otherwise misfit group. Sara was always perfectly preened as if she’d just stepped off of some American High School series with her blonde hair, legs that went on forever and light healthy
tan which
she had even in the depths of winter.

We made our way through the canteen system, grabbing limp sandwiches and machine
hot
-chocolate
(
the only thing drinkable from the vending machine
)
and started to snake our way through the slightly damp-dog smelling lower school. Before we
had
quite made it, Joe shouted out across to Sam,

“Tell her Sam – she
won’t have it. Wasn’t I James Bonding the Blacks last year?”

“Sure Joe, j
ust like Bond.” Sam nodded sarcastically and winked at Daisy causing her to collapse into a fit of giggles.

“You’re so full of it,” she said elbowing Joe so that his sandwich missed his mouth
and splattered
mayonnaise on his cheek
,
furthering his humiliation.

Before Sam could take a seat, a small, still immaculately uniformed Year Seven, which we believed to be Matt’s brother no matter how often he denied it, swerved in from the side and plonked his skinny bum down on the chair.

“Oi! Out weasel head!” Sam let out in full sixth form menace.

“No chance - You snoozed you loosed moose nose.”
Weasel
boy issued this insult as he stuffed a handful of Daisy’s chips into his mouth.

Before Sam could respond in defence of his nose, Weasel boy dived straight into conversation with Matt giving the impression of a small and orange talking cement mixer and leaving Sam nothing to do but stand with his tray in one hand and quietly feel his nose with the other.

“Matt, we wants to know if you can help us out on Wednesday after school? Merrik says we can play a set at the Year Seven disco but we need some help from the Sixth Formers.”

Sam glowered at Matt and Joe
shook
his head in a dramatic ‘noooo’ action.

“Sure thing,
little man,
” Matt said as he extended a clenched fist out to power-
pound the ginger haired rat.
“Count us in. My man Joe will come and help out as well.” Matt thrust two thumbs up in Joe’s face
.

The little ginger kid moved off
of
the seat and as he did
,
he looked at Joe
and
flashed
him a large sarcastic smile of latent child menace before skipping merrily back to his table where he was greeted with a collection of high fives from equally rodent-like small boys.

“Matt, why do you do it man? They drive me potty!” Joe said hitting the palm of his hand to his head
.
“And they’re getting cheekier. I’m sure we weren’t that cheeky when we were in lower school.”

“It’s the decline of man, Joey boy,” he replied taking a swig of coke from his can as if dramatically concluding a complex point of philosophy.

Matt and Joe had achieved an almost unprecedented
cool
status amongst the lower
school boys
because of their recent performance at the school charity gig. Their band,
The Space Cadets,
had finished their set, rather controversially, by performing the now iconic anthem adopted by most of the year eight
boys which
included the inspired lyrics;

‘
School ain’t no place for learning books,

Maths with Rogers really sucks,

I like to imagine how Smithy…
cooks.

Needless to say, the young and very pretty food technology teacher, Ms Smith, had been less than impressed when the Year Eight boys had taken to singing it at the top of their voice replacing the carefully crafted last word. I suspected this had been Matt’s intention along.

Sara and Daisy had moved onto planning our usual Friday night gathering and were in
full animated
flow. I took the last empty seat by the window, which gave me a clear view out onto the playing fields. At this time of the year, when the day never really got going and the dawn bled into twilight, they were eerily grey and empty. A fine layer of frost still coated the blades of grass from the night-frost and a low heavy fog had settled so that even the huge, black skeletal oak trees looked more like shadows than anything of solid substance. I lost myself in it, mentally armouring myself for my next meeting with Blake.

I’m not sure where I was in my thoughts when I heard it, but even though the canteen was bursting with the noise of over excited kids
,
there was
a sound
beyond the glass that grabbed my entire attention and made every other noise fall quiet.

Impossible as it was, the unmistakable
,
thunderous sound of a charging horse travelled towards me on the mist. Its hooves pounded the hard winter earth like the beating of a war drum and it beat in perfect sync with the rhythm of my own heart. It was coming directly towards me and directly towards the plate glass window of the canteen. Panic surged and my body
,
preparing itself for impact, started to fold in on itself. I gasped in one last gulp of air and shut my eyes waiting for the explosion of glass.  Nothing happened. The sound abruptly stopped. Opening one eye, I glanced back to the table expecting to see everybody in the same shock and panic as me but they were all still involved in their own conversations, totally oblivious to the events outside the window.

“Did you hear that?” I asked to no one in particular.

“Ye
a
h, storm coming.”

“It wasn’t thunder,” I whispered. “It’s the wrong time of year.” A series of disinterested shrugs spread through the group.

Outside the window, I expected to see the animal close up, its warm breath misting the window and its rider in shock but there was nothing; just a shifting of the fog through which I was sure I could see the shimmering glint of metal.

“Mina…Mina...Earth calling Mina! What do you fancy, blood and gore or something more romantic?” Daisy pulled me to attention, snapping me out of my bizarre hallucination.

“What?” I asked having no idea as to where we were in the conversation.

“Film. Friday. Romance or gore?”

Without taking my eyes from the window, I responded robotically, “Gore definitely - no contest.”

I turned to look at her briefly.

“Really,
do we have to?” Sara chimed in. “I hate all that stalker-
killer stuff. It is always freaks me out so
that
I can’t sleep. What about the new Anniston film, you know the one about some love triangle?”

Sara, true to form, flicked her expensively highlighted hair as if this might somehow seal the deal. Clearly it was a move that got Matt to agree to anything she wanted. The very thought of seeing a film about love triangles made
me
want to freak!

“Mina?”

“Really, I don’t mind - I’ll go along with everyone else.”

As I said it, I was already thinking up the excuse of a coursework deadline.

By the time the lunch bell went, I’d decided I was going to bail on the afternoon, ensuring no more weird aftershocks from the Blakequake. Feeling slightly pathetic about it, I convinced myself that Blake wasn’t the only reason I had a headache
. I
t wasn’t entirely untrue
;
I couldn’t get the sound of the horse’s galloping hooves out of my head. Only now the sound seemed to have altered ever so slightly so it sounded more like the beating of somebody else’s heart nestling along side my own.

*

I didn’t tell Sam I was leaving early because he’d only have worried and fussed. He’d also have insisted on giving me a ride home and I really wanted to try and walk off the fever that
was
burning.

I wasn’t long into town when I began to regret the really foolish decision to walk. The dry-ice day had grown thick and heavy with sleet and having had a lift with Sam in the morning, I was completely underdressed and now violently shivering. Weighing up the very real possibility of freezing to death before I made it home, I took a turn into the bookshop, tempted by the warm yellow lights and the th
ought of the thick, velvety hot-
chocolate they served whilst you lost yourself in big saggy sofas.