Evil Star (3 page)

He still doubted he could bring Richard anything more than trouble.

• • •

From the outside, it was attractive enough. There was a quadrangle, an old courtyard with arches and outside stair-cases — and next to it a chapel complete with stained glass and gargoyles. Some parts of the school were three hundred years old and looked it, but in recent times the governors had managed to attract more money and had invested it in new buildings. There was a theater, a science Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star department, and a barn-size library on two floors, as well as tennis courts, a swimming pool, and playing fields. Everything was situ-ated, as Forrest Hill's name suggested, in what was a basin in the countryside with the roads sloping steeply down from all directions.

The first time Matt had seen it, he had thought he was being driven into a university campus. It was only when he saw the boys, aged thirteen to eighteen, walking between classes in their fancy bluejackets and gray trousers that he realized that it was just a secondary school.

It was certainly a world apart from St. Edmund's, the comprehensive school he had gone to in Ipswich. Matt didn't know where to begin when he compared the two. Everything was so neat and tidy here.

There was no graffiti, no smell of chips, no flaking paint and goalposts with the net hanging in rags. There must have been a thousand books in the library, and all the computers in the technol-ogy center were state-of-the-art. Even the uniform made a huge difference. Putting it on for the first time, Matt felt as if something had been taken away from him. The jacket weighed down on his shoulders and cut underneath his arms. The tie with its green and gray stripes was ridiculous. He didn't want to be a businessman, so why was he dressing up as one? When he looked in the mirror, it was as if he were seeing someone else.

It wasn't Richard who had come up with the idea of sending him here. The Nexus — the mysterious organiza-tion that had taken over his life — had suggested it. Matt had done almost no work for two years. He was behind in every subject. Sending him to a new school in the middle of the summer term would cause problems wherever he went. But a private school wouldn't ask too many questions and might be able to look after his special needs. The Nexus was paying.

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star It seemed like a good idea. But it had gone wrong almost from the start.

Most of the teachers at Forrest Hill were all right, but it was the ones who weren't who really made themselves felt. It seemed to take Matt only days to make permanent enemies with Mr. King, who taught English, and Mr. O'Shaughnessy, who doubled as French teacher and assistant headmaster. Both these men were in their thirties but behaved like they were much older. On the first day, Mr. King had given Matt a dressing-down for chewing gum in the quadrangle. On the second, it had been Mr. O'Shaughnessy who had given him a high-pitched, ten-minute lecture for an untucked shirt. After that, both of them seemed to have taken every opportunity they could to pick on him.

Still, the teachers were nothing compared with the other boys at the school. Matt was a survivor. There had been some real bullies at St.

Edmund's, including one or two who seemed to take a real pleasure in picking on anyone who was small, hardworking, or just different from them. He had known it would take time to make friends in a new school, especially now that he was moving into the private sector. But even so, he had been surprised by how few of them had been prepared to give him a chance.

Of course, they all knew each other. The other fourteen-year-olds at Forrest Hill were at the end of their second year and they'd already made their friendships. A pattern of life had been established. As a newcomer, Matt knew that he was intruding. Worse than that, he had come from a completely different world. Very few of the boys were snobs, but they were still suspicious about him. One boy in particular seemed determined to give him a hard time.

His name was Gavin Taylor. He was in most of the same classes as Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star Matt. And he controlled their entire grade.

Taylor wasn't physically big. He was slim with a turned-up nose and blond, slightly greasy hair that hung down to his collar. He made a point of ensuring that his tie was never straight, slouching around with his hands in his pock-ets and an attitude that warned everyone

— staff or student — to keep his distance. There was an arrogance to him that Matt could feel a hundred yards away. It was said that he was one of the richest boys in the school. His father had a company selling secondhand cars on the Internet throughout Britain. And Taylor had four or five friends who
were
big. They followed him round the school like bit-part villains in a Quentin Tarantino film.

It was Taylor who had decided that Matt was bad news. It wasn't what he knew about the new arrival that offended him. It was what he didn't. Matt had come out of nowhere at the end of the school year. He hadn't been to a prep school and he wouldn't explain why he had left his com-prehensive, what had happened to his parents, or what he had been doing for the past two months. Taylor had taunted and teased Matt for the first few weeks, trying to make him drop his guard. The fact that Matt wasn't scared of him and refused to tell him anything only angered him all the more.

But then something happened that made the whole situation infinitely worse. Somehow, Taylor overheard the school secretary talking on the phone in her office and learned that Matt had been in trouble with the police. He'd spent time in a Secure Children's Home or something similar. And he had no money. Some sort of charity, an organization in London, had picked up the tab to send him here.

Within minutes, the story had spread all around the school, and from that moment, Matt had been doomed. He was the new boy. The charity case. A loser. He wasn't part of the school and never would Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star be.

Maybe there were boys there who would have been more generous ... but they were too scared of Gavin Taylor. So Matt found himself virtually friendless. He hadn't told Richard any of this —

Matt had never been the sort of per-son to complain out loud. When his parents had died, when he had been sent to live with Gwenda Davis, even when he had been working as a virtual slave at Hive Hall, he had tried to build a wall around himself. But each day was becoming harder to endure. He was certain that sooner or later something would snap.

As usual, the bus dropped him off at half past eight. The day always began with an assembly in the chapel, a hymn sung tunelessly by six hundred and fifty schoolboys who were only half awake, and a brief address from the head or one of the teachers. Matt kept his head down. He thought about what he had said to Richard that morning.

He really was determined to go. He'd had enough.

The first two lessons weren't too bad. The math and history teachers were young and sympathetic and didn't allow the other boys in the class to pick on him. Matt spent the morning break in the library, trying to catch up with his homework. After that, he had forty-five minutes with the special-needs teacher who was trying to help him with his spelling and grammar. The last lesson before lunch was English, and Mr. King was in a bad mood.

"Freeman, will you please stand up!"

Matt got warily to his feet. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Taylor nudge another boy and grin. He made sure his own face gave nothing away.

Mr. King walked toward him. The English teacher was beginning to Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star lose his hair. He combed the ginger strands from one side of his head to the other, but the bald curve of his skull still showed through. He was holding a dog-eared copy of
Oliver Twist.
This was the book they had been reading in class. He also had a pile of exercise books.

"Did you read the chapters that I set you in
Oliver Twist?"
he asked.

"I tried to," Matt said. He liked the characters in the story, but he found some of the language old-fashioned and difficult to follow.

Why did Charles Dickens have to use so much description?

“You tried to?" Mr. King sneered at him. "I think what you mean is, you didn't."

"I did —" Matt began.

"Don't interrupt me, Freeman. Your essay was the worst in the class.

You scored a pathetic two out of twenty. You can't even spell
Fagin

correctly!
F-A-Y-G-I-N!
There is no Tin
Fagin,
Freeman. If you'd read the chapters, you'd know that."

Taylor guffawed. Despite himself, Matt felt his cheeks glowing red.

“You will read the chapters again and you will do the test again, and in the future, I'd prefer it if you didn't lie to me. Now sit down." He threw Matt's exercise book onto the desk as if it were something he had found in the gutter.

The lesson dragged on until the lunchtime bell. There were games that afternoon and at least Matt should have enjoyed that. He was fit and fast on his feet. But he was never part of the team on the sports field, either. They were playing cricket this term and Matt hadn't been surprised when he was sent to field at deep cover, as far away from everyone else as possible.

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star The school ate lunch in one of the school's modern buildings. There was a self-service buffet with a choice of hot or cold food, and fifty long tables arranged in lines beneath an ugly, modern chandelier.

The boys were allowed to sit where they wanted to, but normally each year stuck together. The clatter of knives and forks and the clamor of so many voices echoed all around.

Matt was hungry. He had been late for the school bus and hadn't had time to buy anything at McDonald's. And there hadn't been much to eat in Richard's flat the night before. The food was the one thing at Forrest Hill that he did like, and he helped himself to a healthy lunch of ham, salad, ice cream, and fruitjuice. Carrying his tray, he looked for somewhere to sit. After five weeks at the school, he had lost hope of anyone inviting him to join them.

He saw an empty space and made for it. With the tray in front of him, he didn't see the foot that was stretched out in his path. The next thing he knew, he had been tripped. Helplessly, he pitched forward. The tray, two plates, a glass, his knife, fork, and spoon left his hands and hit the floor with a deafening crash. Matt followed them. Unable to stop himself, he fell on top of what was meant to be his lunch. The entire room fell silent. Even before he looked up, Matt knew that everyone was staring.

It hadn't been Taylor who had tripped him up. It was one of Taylor's friends. But Matt had no doubt that it had been Taylor's idea. He could see him, a few tables away, standing up with a glass in one hand, a stupid smile spread-ing across his face. Matt got to his knees. Ice cream was dripping from his shirt. He was surrounded by pieces of salad, kneeling in a puddle of fruit juice.

And then Taylor laughed.

It was a cue for the rest of the school to join in. It seemed to Matt Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star that just about the entire room — the entire school — was laughing at him. He saw Mr. O'Shaughnessy making his way toward him.

Why did the assistant headmas-ter have to be on lunch duty that day?

"Why do you have to be so clumsy, Freeman?" Mr. O'Shaughnessy asked. The words seemed to be coming from a long way away. They echoed in Matt's ears. "Are you all right?"

Taylor was pointing at him.

Matt looked up. He could feel the anger coursing through him —

and not just anger. Something else. He couldn't have stopped it, even if he had tried to. It was as if he had become a channel. There were flames flowing through him. He could actually smell the burning.

The chandelier exploded.

It was an ugly thing, a tangle of steel arms and lightbulbs that some architect must have thought would suit the room. And it was directly over Gavin Taylor. Now, as Matt stared, the bulbs shattered, one after another, each bursting apart with the sound of a pistol shot.

Glass showered down, smashing onto the tables. Taylor looked up and cried out as a piece of glass hit him in the face. More glass rained down on him. A few wisps of smoke rose up to the ceiling.

Nobody was laughing anymore. The entire room was silent.

Then the glass that Taylor was holding exploded, too. It simply blew itself apart in his hand. Taylor cried out. His palm had been cut open. He looked at Matt, then at his hand. His mouth opened but it seemed to take him forever to find the words.

"It was him!" he screamed. "He did it!"

He was pointing at Matt. His whole body was trembling.

The assistant headmaster stared helplessly. He looked bewildered, Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star unsure what to do. This sort of thing had never happened before. It was way outside his experience.

"It was him!" Taylor insisted.

"Don't be ridiculous," Mr. O'Shaughnessy said. "I saw what happened. Freeman was nowhere near you."

Gavin Taylor had gone pale. It might have been the pain, the sight of his own blood welling out of the cut in his hand. But Matt knew that it was more than that. Gavin was terrified.

Mr. O'Shaughnessy tried to take charge. "Someone get the matron,"

he snapped. "And we'd better clear the room. There's glass everywhere. . . ."

People were already moving. They didn't know what had happened.

They just wanted to get out of the dining hall before the whole ceiling came down. They seemed to have forgotten Matt for the moment.. . but if any of them had looked for him, they would have seen that he was already gone.

Chapter 3 A Second Gate