Drop (3 page)

Eventually I find it. There’s a kitchen in one corner; a couple of guys perch on the worktop, playing with their phones. The walls are lined with hard, low blue chairs, inhumane hybrids – half seat, half torture device. They look poised to snap closed like a Venus flytrap if you sit on them. There are two long tables in the middle of the room, with safer, if not more comfortable, benches.

I see Lauren and a friend at a table, eating lunch. She waves me over and I gratefully accept. No one wants to be a loner at lunchtime.

“Hey,” I say and sit in the space opposite her, next to the other girl.

“This is Sienna,” Lauren says, “our resident spelunking enthusiast.”

Sienna has a thick copper fringe, cut severely just above her eyes, and skin like porcelain.

“Spelunking?” I ask.

“She likes to crawl about in dingy caves.”

“I want to be a speleologist.” Sienna looks at me through a curtain of hair. “Study cave systems. In Austria there’s a giant cave filled with ice sculptures made when the snow above thawed, drained into the cave and refroze. It’s amazing.”

“It sounds, um, cold. Cool, I mean.” I can’t get the right words out.

“Sienna spends so much time in the dark, she’s lost the genes for skin pigmentation. That’s why she’s so white!”

“I’m Irish!” Sienna turns to me. “So where are you from?” There’s a question.

“All over the place. More recently, Nottingham. But I’ve lived in Bath, Cardiff, Cheltenham…”

“Are you in witness protection or something?”

“My family just moves around a lot.”

“I bet you have to say that.”

I shrug. But then I realize I have a real chance to make friends here and I’m screwing it up.

“We’re fugitives. On the run. My dad stole Simon Cowell’s helicopter for a joke. Took it for a joyride.”

Lauren raises an eyebrow and takes a bite of cheese sandwich. I fiddle with the frayed straps of my bag, then take out a chicken roll wrapped in foil. Dad made it from last night’s leftovers. I munch away.

Sienna laughs. “It all makes sense now.”

Lauren finishes her sandwich and starts on an apple.

I whip out my timetable, hoping my new acquaintances will be in the same lessons. “I know you take Art, Lauren, but do either of you take these other classes?” I ask, spreading the crumpled piece of A4 on the table.

“Let’s see.” Lauren studies the paper. “I take Biology.”

Sienna perks up. “Me too, and Chemistry. You’ve basically found the Science geeks.”

“What am I in for?”

“With us? A thrill ride of cellular organization, anaerobic respiration, inherited variation and the occasional trip to the cinema.”

Lauren ignores Sienna. “Miss Tillsman, the Biology teacher, is all right. A bit loopy. She has a serious mascara goop problem. Always in the right eye. It can be hard to concentrate with that thing just sitting there like a baby slug.”

“We mark the goop on a scale of one to five,” Sienna says. “One: Minor goop; Two: Goopus Maximus; Three: Goopasaurus Rex; Four: ‘Is it a bird, is it a plane?’; Five: ‘That thing is so huge, how can she even see us? It looks like the bloody Death Star.’ ”

“It freaks me out. I’m so OCD I just want to stick my finger right in there and scratch it out.” Lauren shudders.

“That’s disgusting,” Sienna says.

“Look forward to it,” I say.

The common-room door flies open. A group of guys and girls walks in. They sit on the other table, their feet on the benches. Finn tosses a helmet in his hands.

“So, enlighten me,” I say to Lauren. “Who are they?”

“That’s Finn Masterson. Nice guy. The local fittie. Slight problem with authority. Greg White, hockey captain. Georgia Presco with the mess of curls and scary red talons. She’s a model in her spare time. Goes out with Greg. Her parents won eight million on the Lotto last year! She didn’t fancy going to a posh school and leaving Greg, so she’s still here.”

“And that’s Violet Brody with the shiny shampoo-ad hair that’s been known to blind people if it catches the light,” Sienna says, pointing to a girl who looks like she’s stepped right out of an American Apparel commercial. She embodies cool. Tall, sleek, chic, shining eyes… And cheekbones. I mean, I know everyone has them, but hers are set some magic way that makes her face a perfect shape.

“They say her hair’s woven from a unicorn’s mane,” Sienna chips in, leaning closer, “and sprayed with real diamonds.”

Lauren rolls her eyes. “She’s basically the queen bee. The guys fall over themselves to impress her.”

“Didn’t Jay Fletcher write her that song in Year 10? And sing it at the talent show?” Sienna asks.

“Ohmygod, that was classic.”

“How did it go again?”

Lauren straightens up and strums air guitar, closing her eyes to exaggerate the emotion:

“Violet, you’re so beautiful,

A man could get violent,

With passion, not fists, I’m not like that.

If I couldn’t have you,

I’d take a vow of silence.

Oh, Violet, be mine,

We can shine together for ever in the twilight.”

Sienna descends into hysterics. “And the whole crowd started chanting, ‘Take the vow of silence!’ ”

“She’s popular, then?”

Lauren shrugs. “I guess. So, that’s Fat Mike, self-explanatory.” She continues the lesson, Cool Kids 101. “The tall one’s James ‘Slinky’ Tyler. He smokes a lot of weed.”

“Why do they call him Slinky?”

“Because he’s always looking round corners. Like a Slinky goes down steps. Paranoid on account of the fact he smokes so much. Plus he’s really tall. And that’s Isaac, Finn’s older brother. He’s in year 13. The strong, silent type. They’re impossibly cool. If you like that sort of thing.”

The curly-haired girl accidentally drops her folder on the floor. Finn hops off the table and retrieves it. She thanks him.

“I’m going to the shop. Anyone want anything?” Finn asks the room. There’s a chorus of mumbled negatives.

“You’ll be late for class,” Isaac tells his brother.

“Yes, I will,” Finn replies.

I’ve been to enough schools to know that when you start, you pick a group and you stay there. I never really bothered to stray from my social sub-group, the Brainy Plain Girls, two-thirds of the way down the pecking order. Of course, the categories differ depending on location and there’s some overlap, but it normally goes something like this:

I feel like this new school, my final-ever school, is in some ways a last-ditch attempt to climb that ladder.

There’s nothing wrong with mid-range social standing, not at all, but, I guess, I’d really like to have my time in the sun.

Finn, Isaac, Violet, Georgia, Greg: they’re all magnetic,
alive
with this
energy
. There’s a charisma about them that I long to have. I want to be in on their secrets and jokes; to tell a story and have them rapt, tipping back their heads, roaring with laughter; for them to link arms with me in the corridor and think,
Wow, that Carla is really
someone.

It’s time for change. It’s time to twirl around in that phone box and exit as all-singing, all-dancing Super Carla.

Is hanging around with the Brainy Plain Girls going to get me where I want to be? Probably not… But I need the friends. And they
are
nice… Maybe I’m not worthy of the top spot anyway. One of the Beautiful People? It’s just a fantasy; a deluded, last-third-of-the-ladder fantasy. This is where I’m meant to be, and I ought to be thankful I’ve made human contact at all.

The bell rings. I shove my timetable and the half-eaten chicken roll into my bag.

“Come on,” says Sienna. “I’ll show you to the Chemistry lab.”

At my last school I could get lost in a sea of blue shirts. Thorncroft sixth-formers don’t wear uniform and stand out like shark fins in that sea. I feel like a minnow, a flicker of colour, tiny but just visible. These sharks will eat me alive. I want to be accepted, popular. If I’m going to be here a while, I have to
be
somebody. I have to become a shark.

“OK, listen up, people!” booms Mr Paluk, the Chemistry teacher. “This demonstration involves electrolyzing water, and the explosive recombination of hydrogen and oxygen. Goggles on!”

The lab door bursts open. A figure appears, all beaming smile and confidence and oh-so-late. Paluk rolls his eyes, obviously used to this behaviour. Finn perches at the front in the only free space, the seat next to me. He throws me a grin. My self-awareness sky-rockets. Still, I can’t help but smile back. He’s here, sitting next to me, breathing the same air…

The whole class moves to retrieve goggles from the box on our bench.

The Girl With the Blinding Hair touches his shoulder and he turns to face her.

“Be my partner, Finn? Marcus said he’d swap.” Violet runs her fingers through her uber-straight, dark cherry locks.

“I have a partner, Vi. I’ll catch you in History.”

He picked
me
over
her
?

Violet shrugs, takes a pair of goggles and heads back to her seat.

“Looks like we’re lab buddies,” he says.

“I guess so,” I say, mentally cramming joy into my jeans pocket so it doesn’t spill out as a crazy three-foot grin across my face.

Finn oozes confidence. I could learn a thing or two from him. Finn Masterson: Master of Ease. I’m wound tighter than a spring.

Mr Paluk turns to the whiteboard and draws up a list of the equipment and chemicals we need next to a diagram of the apparatus.

I watch Finn set up the experiment. He seems eager and like he knows what he’s doing. Behold: behind his cocky exterior beats the heart of a scientist. Swoon.

He holds out a rubber bung to me.

“Can you thread the platinum wire through this, please?”

I take the silver string and poke it through. I glance up at the diagram, grab some plastic tubing and put it into place.

“Hey, sorry if I scared you with the tiger thing this morning. I can be an idiot sometimes. Just tell me to shove off if I get lairy.”

“It’s OK,” I say. “First day. Wasn’t expecting to be pounced on.”

“Yeah, pouncing is usually a day three or four thing.” He smiles.

He rolls up his sleeves, exposing strong, muscular arms. The skin is scraped from his elbows, which look red and sore. He pours a solution of hydrated sodium sulphate into a glass jar.

“You like Chemistry?” I enquire.

“Don’t I seem the type?” he asks, batting his chocolate lashes. I’m starting to think he’s the one with the legendary looks, not Violet Brody. He’s like Thor or Hercules or I don’t know, Robert Downey Jr in
Iron Man
. Gorgeous.

“
Are
you the type?” I ask, sarcastically.

“Oh, she strikes me in the chest!” Finn fakes an arrow with a piece of plastic tubing and thrusts it at his torso. “I like many things, Carla.”

He remembered my name.

He peeks at me through his not-so-cool goggles and I realize that while he still looks stunning, I probably look like Deirdre Barlow from
Corrie
.

“Yeah, I like Chemistry. It’s something I get. Surprised?”

“No, just sketching your character.”

“You can sketch me any time.” He winks, then stares at me for what seems an eternity.

“Are you going to put the bung in?”

“Excuse me?” I feel a flush creeping up my neck and across my cheeks.

“In the jar. Are you going to put the bung in or just stand there holding it? I don’t think this experiment is going to work without it.”

“Oh, I thought… Never mind.” I put the stopper in the top of the jar.

“Press it hard. We’ve got to make it gas-tight.”

I search deep in my armoury of social skills, which, as it happens, isn’t that deep, for something to say. The only subject I can think of is school.

“How about Art? You like it as much as Chemistry?”

“Not exactly. It’s not that I don’t
like
it. Basically, I thought it would be a doss. I was wrong though. It’s hard work.”

I connect the wires to a power pack. Soon bubbles start to appear in the solution around the wires.

“Beaker.” Finn holds out his hand expectantly, like a surgeon waiting for a scalpel. He smiles so widely, so openly. It’s infectious. I smile back and pass the beaker. He pours in some water.

“Washing-up liquid.”

I hand him the bottle. He adds a squirt to the water.

“Tube.” I put the other end of the plastic tube into the beaker.

“Careful, this is a tricky manoeuvre.” He mock-wipes sweat from his brow while, being this close to him, I
actually
start to sweat. It’s my first day. My heart has grown three sizes bigger and will soon pound right out of my chest.

Gas starts to bubble in the beaker. While he’s watching it, my eyes develop minds of their own and start to roam across his torso, his neck, his thick hair.

“Now comes the fun part. Bunsen burner on,” he says, throwing me a glance so full of warmth and charm I feel I’ve been lit from the inside and can be seen glowing from space.