Attack of the Cupids (24 page)

‘All right, then,' said Eros, twirling his blank mask in his hand. ‘Shall we have one more try? Who are you, Sally? In your heart, who are you? Who are you
for
?'

The mask seemed to slow as he spun it. Sally felt a tingling just below her ribs. It seemed to lift her, as if she had no weight at all. Which was just as well, because her knees were shaking. They had no strength. Her blood was water. Or maybe it was fire. Something in her chest felt as if it was about to burst. She knew who was coming. They all did.

‘Riches!' shrieked Muddlespot desperately.

‘Wisdom!' cried Windleberry.

‘Love,' whispered Eros, putting the mask to his face.

‘Anyone want a burger?' said Charlie B.

‘Um, what?' said Sally. She had hardly heard him. Zac's face was looking down on her. For an instant that might have been a hundred years she had not been able to think or say anything. Thoughts reeled in her brain like snatches from dreams, without start or finish or sense. Where am I? Here. Where is here? Looking up at Zac. Who is looking at me.

Except he wasn't looking at her. Something else had caught his attention.

‘Burger?' he said.

Charlie B had joined them in the corridor. He had three foam burger cases in a stack in his hands.

‘My birthday. My brother brought a load to the school gates. These are left over.'

‘Hey, cheers,' said Alec, taking one.

‘Cheers,' said Tony. He took one too.

Zac hesitated. He looked at Charlie B. He looked at Sally. ‘You want a burger, Sally?'

Sally said ‘Um . . .'

Tony lifted his burger from its case. There was a smell. Burgers always smell.

But . . . like that?

And far away, a voice from the calendar corridors of her mind shrieked, ‘
It isn't Charlie's birthday!
'

‘Just check they're the kind you like,' said Charlie offhandedly.

Tony paused, his mouth already open. He lifted the top half of his burger. Charlie grabbed Sally by the arm. Within, Muddlespot grabbed her too.

Both yelled, ‘RUN!'

Tony screamed.

Charlie yanked Sally half off her feet. She staggered and nearly fell. The boys jumped back. The burgers fell from their hands, spilling green and leggy contents that hit the floor with soft plops and – this was the worst –
hopped
when they got there. Alec let out a yell.

‘Come
on
!' yelped Charlie, although really he had not needed to say this because the two of them were already halfway down the corridor and accelerating fast.

‘You . . . what did you . . .?' gasped Sally.

‘Just
run
!'

‘Get them!' roared Zac.

‘Get them!' roared Eros in Sally's mind.

‘Just—' began Muddlespot.

‘I know,' moaned Sally. ‘Run!'

They bolted together through the arched doorway
that led from the central chamber. An arrow, wickedly tipped with gold, flew past them. Behind her Sally could hear the voices of Zac, the voice of Eros, calling. She fled him down the labyrinthine ways of her mind.

‘Fifteen . . . minutes . . . to the . . . bell,' gasped Charlie B. ‘Need to . . . get out of . . . sight . . .'

They careered down the English corridor, crashed through the double doors and took the corner at full speed with their feet slipping on the linoleum floor.

‘
Hey!
' cried Sam Gosling, as they barged past him.

‘What the . . .?' fumed Amelia, as they kicked over her bag and scattered her books along the floor.

‘Sorry!' yelled Sally, disappearing in the direction of the library.

‘Hey!' wailed the thoughts in the war rooms as Muddlespot and Sally tore through it, upsetting the tables and sending charts of climate change fluttering through the air. ‘What about
us
?'

‘Need to . . . think again . . . anyway . . .' Sally gasped. ‘If there's an . . . asteroid . . .'

‘What?' said the thoughts.

‘Tell you lateeerrrrr!' cried Sally, receding in a red blur.

Into the war room burst the cupids, cooing and hallooing, trumpets high and harps waving menacingly.
And all those cool-headed, world-saving ideas, all those Plans and Appeals and Calculations of the Carbon Cycle and Good Resolutions Not to Have Too Many Hot Baths, took one look, shrieked and scattered, as such thoughts always must before the power that rules the human soul.

Deliberate speed! Majestic instancy! The golden hunt poured through the halls of Sally's mind. Horns blew, arrows flew. The corridors heaved and twisted. The crystal columns coloured pink and purple and gold, like trees that catch the sunset. Thoughts wailed and clung to one another, cowering in corners as the cupids passed. Sally and Muddlespot fled before them. As they flew down a corridor, a memory of Greg wandered aimlessly out of a room ahead of them.

Greg! I was going to tell him he had to
 . . .

The thought of Greg looked around, wide-eyed, intact for just an instant. Then it shattered in a hail of badly-aimed golden arrows and disappeared under a tonne of rose petals. And all the while the voice of Eros beat upon Sally's ear.

‘They've . . . split up . . .' puffed Charlie B. ‘Gone round the quad . . . to catch us. What are you . . .?'

Sally had her mobile out of her pocket and was frantically pushing buttons. ‘Got to . . . remind
Greg . . . get flowers for Mum,' she panted.

‘You . . . crazy!'

‘No! Must do this . . .
now
!'

‘There they are!'

‘Aaaaaaargh!' cried both Sally and Charlie, as Alec appeared in the corridor ahead of them. They swerved to the right and pounded up the stairs. Little showers of invisible stray arrows poured from Sally as she ran. One caught Viola as she loitered haughtily on the landing with her bag over her shoulder. She barely saw Charlie and Sally. She had just time to register Alec pounding up the steps towards her before something thrilled in her heart and she knew that she cared nothing for Tony or Billie or even for standing around looking haughty, but only for flinging herself into his arms, which she did. Both duly fell back down the stairs.

The pursuit tore around the top floor of the school. Miss Tackle and Mr Kingsley, sitting one in his classroom and the other in the staff room, heard the noise. They rose from their seats and came out to restore order, Miss Tackle towering like a thundercloud and Mr Kingsley slithering like an offended snail. They emerged at the exact moment that Sally passed emitting invisible gold arrows in all directions. They saw Sally. They saw each other. Their eyes met.

Mr Kingsley felt sudden confusion. All at once the riot seemed distant. There was chaos and disorder going on somewhere, but strangely it did not matter. The air was a haze of golden things. The face of Theodora Tackle swam before him, a face he had seen every day and yet had somehow always failed to see before this. He had no idea what was happening to him or what he could do about it. He couldn't speak. He didn't dare. He couldn't possibly bring himself to address her. She was an angel, an image of perfection . . .

So it was just as well Miss Tackle looked at him and decided on the spot that she didn't want to be ‘Miss Tackle' any more. After that, there was only one way things were going to go.

Still the hunt rioted down the corridors and the golden voices hallooed in Sally's mind, more instant than the feet that were pounding themselves to inchthin tenderness on the floors of Darlington High.

‘Oi-oi-oi-oi!!! There they go!!!!'

‘Run!' screamed Muddlespot.

‘Run!' screamed Charlie.

And Sally wailed ‘But what if I
want
to get caught?'

‘It's not worth it,' panted Muddlespot. ‘Trust me!'

There was a place, at last, where the world stood still. Unlike all the other places in Darlington High, unlike the tossing and disordered passages of Sally's mind,
this
place, strangely, strangely, did not go tumbling off anywhere to become somewhere else.

It was the very unromantic and slightly smelly corner behind the bike sheds to one side of the main parking area. Sally and Charlie sat against a concrete wall and tried to remember how to breathe.

‘I think we lost ‘em,' panted Charlie, who (given the chance) would always talk in lines from certain kinds of film.

‘What was . . . (gasp) in those burgers?'

‘Frogs,' said Charlie. ‘Got them . . . biology lab . . .'

‘You . . .' Sally gagged. ‘
Charlie!
'

‘Ta-daaahhh!'

‘But . . .' (gasp) ‘they'll think . . .' (gasp) ‘I was part of that!'

‘You were. You said to give one to Tony.'

‘I said forget it!'

‘Oh, I
knew
you didn't mean that bit.'

‘But . . . Alec and Zac . . .'

‘Had to do three. Tony'd have been suspicious if I'd just picked him out.'

Goodbye, Zac, thought Sally sadly. To you, I shall
always be the girl who set you up for a frogburger.

She drew another breath.

Oxygen starvation did funny things. It dulled pain of all kinds. The fact that she would now have to spend the next year and a bit trying
not
to get seen by the three coolest boys in the school seemed, strangely, to be less impossibly dreadful than it should have been. At least, that was how it felt when compared to her immediate and overwhelming need to swallow more air.

She checked her watch. She was astonished to find that there was another ten minutes before the end of break. She felt she had been running for ever.

‘Coast's clear,' said Charlie, peering round the corner of the shed. ‘No one – uh – Mr Singh's up in the Physics lab. He's looking out of the window.'

Sally's heart bumped harder. Her stomach detached itself and whisked off into some void or other. Her hand was still clutching Imogen's oboe case. She had almost forgotten it was there.

(
‘Guilty
,'
it said to her.)

‘What's he doing?' she asked nervously.

‘Having a lurk, I guess.'

‘He'll be looking for someone with an oboe case.'

Charlie's eye fell on it. ‘Ah. And what happens if
he finds them?'

Sally shrugged miserably. ‘The world will end.'

‘We have to lie low for a bit,' said Charlie, reverting to film script.

All right, thought Sally bitterly. I'm guilty. And the guys I thought were cool aren't cool. There was something
mean
about the way they chased us . . .

And in just a few minutes I'm going to have to walk out and let Mr Singh see me with the oboe and put the cuffs on me. Because Imogen's got to have it back. And then I'll have to lie and take the blame, or tell the truth and get a whole lot of others into trouble. Either way, it's going to be pretty world-ending stuff.

Where's a meteorite when you really want one?