Bad Dreams (4 page)

And it is true. I wouldn't want to have to get through even one day the way the others do it. I see them, constantly in each other's company, always cheerful, always chatty. They never get ratty when someone suddenly begins to plait their hair without even asking, or begs to try on their glasses, or pesters them for hours about who is their favourite singer. Twenty different people can come up, one after another, and tell them something they already know, like, ‘You've got a cold,' or, ‘Those are new shoes you're wearing,' and they keep smiling. They don't even
mind
.

I don't know how they do it. I'd go mad. So making someone feel even a tiny bit awkward about hiding away anywhere, especially the book corner, would be, to me, like snatching away a lifebelt.

I couldn't do it to my own worst enemy. I certainly couldn't do it to someone who'd never done anything except try to be pleasant and helpful.

I had to run after her. ‘Imogen! Wait a minute! Stop!'

And she turned and smiled at me. So that was that settled.

CHAPTER FIVE

I
t must have been a good long while since Imogen had had a friend. No-one else wanted to be near her. This was the reason, she admitted, she'd left her old school. Only a few of her classmates had gone around whispering that she was ‘creepy' – the ones she thought must have been talking to me – but all of the rest had kept away from her as much as possible, making giant great fusses if they were even asked to share a desk or a table.

‘What, even in work groups?'

The tears sprang. ‘It was
horrible
.'

I felt so sorry for her. And the teachers had found her crying in corners so often that, in the end, they had suggested she might be better starting afresh in a new school.

Ours.

The problem was, of course, that you could see it was all happening again, exactly the same. Everyone except me avoided her. It wasn't like giving someone the big freeze because they've been spiteful, or something. In fact, I don't believe people even realized they were doing it. But somehow, everywhere Imogen went, everyone melted away.

And it wasn't just the book corner, because the first time I really noticed it, she and I were walking down the corridor towards the lunch room. Paul had bent down to tie up his shoe-lace, but, as the two of us came close, I saw him hastily straighten up and drift off, with his shoe-lace still flapping.

Funny, I thought.

And then the two girls from another class who had been sitting on the window-ledge, sharing a book, suddenly closed it without a word, and wandered away.

We went into lunch, and, now I'd noticed it, I realized it had been happening all week. Whenever the two of us had headed for a busy table, within seconds everyone was stacking their dishes back onto their trays, and taking them over to the hatches.

Then, on the way back from the cloakroom on my own, I bumped into Maria and Tasj.

‘Don't you find it a bpit creepy, going round with her?' Tasj asked me outright. ‘She's so
weird
.'

‘Seriously strange,' agreed Maria.

I tried to defend her. ‘She doesn't bother me. I get on with her all right.'

But I was definitely the only one. It wasn't just Mr Hooper who avoided her. Even the other teachers seemed to move away when she was near. That afternoon I stood waiting while Imogen rooted in her book bag to make sure she still had her calculator. Just across the hall, Miss Harvey and Mr Sands were standing together, checking something on a chart. Suddenly, Mr Sands looked quite distracted. He glanced round uneasily, then said to Miss Harvey, ‘Shall we go and do this—' He obviously couldn't think of anywhere else they should be doing it, so he just finished up lamely, ‘–somewhere else?'

I didn't think the idea wo uld go down very well. Miss Harvey's famous in our school for not wasting time. She's usually telling the people in her class what to do even before she walks through the door. But now she, too, was looking round a bit uncomfortably, a bit unsure. And together, still holding the chart, they moved off across the hallway.

Away from their classrooms, I noticed.

Away from Imogen.

And away from me.

So even I ended up having to ask myself how I could stand being so close to someone so spooky. And I can't really explain, except to say that, from the moment I ran after her, she never bothered me at all the way she bothered other people. I never felt the urge to drift away. Now, looking back, I wonder if it was because I was the only one who knew for certain there was something strange about her. I didn't have to share their vague, uneasy feeling. But sometimes I think that all that time spent with my head in books had made weird people so familiar to me that I barely thought twice. After all, no-one writes a story that boils down to, ‘Once, there was a normal young girl, and nothing of interest happened her whole life.' And, if they did, no-one would bother to read it. Would you have finished the last book you read if it had been about a plain, happy person doing nothing but plain, happy things?

When you were three, perhaps. Certainly not now.

So I was interested in her. And she turned out to be the perfect friend for someone like me. She was quiet, and she didn't mind spending half her life in the book corner and the other half in the library.

But, though he didn't seem to want to spend too much time near her himself, the fact that she didn't mix with the others did bother Mr Hooper.

‘Imogen, maybe you shouldn't be spending all your time skulking between bookshelves like Melly.'

I looked up from the thriller I was reading. ‘This is a school,' I teased him. ‘You ought to be pleased we're sitting quietly with our noses in books.'

And he never noticed that, though my nose was, hers certainly wasn't. It even took me a while to realize that Imogen never actually read a book. Oh, she'd run her fingertips along the shelves, and pick one out. She had her favourites. One had a country scene on the cover.

Another had children playing happily with puppies and kittens.

She'd settle on one of the little yellow tubs, hold the book in her lap and stare off in the distance. If someone walked past, she'd open what she'd chosen quickly, anywhere, and look down until they'd gone by.

But most of the time she was just sitting with a look of pure enchantment on her face, as if she'd been whisked away somewhere magical.

‘Happy?' I'd ask her, and she'd nod dreamily.

Then, ‘Happy?' she'd ask me back, and I'd nod as well, because things were going pretty well for me, too, now that Mr Hooper had at last got me down for having a friend, and stopped nagging me about mixing and joining in, and all that stuff.

Yet Imogen kept everyone away.

Especially in swimming. And I love swimming. It's the only sport I like. Mr Hooper says that's because it's practically the only thing we do in school in which I know I'm safe from hearing things like, ‘Now get yourselves into two teams,' or ‘Choose groups to work in,' or the one that I really loathe, which is, ‘Now choose a partner.'

And it is true, I love that feeling when you've finally found a bit of a space in the middle of all that shrieking and splashing. You let your feet slip out in front of you along the tiles, your head slides under, your hair floats up like weed, and just for a moment everyone's vanished. It's just you and your own magical, glistening bubbles.

Then someone steams past, kicking and shrieking, and the world's back again, spoiling it totally.

But Imogen worked like a secret barrier. Nobody except me realized, but from the moment she began picking her way down the steps into the shallows, everyone else was suddenly deciding to practise their racing starts up at the deep end of the pool, or hang by their feet from the bar along the other side.