Star of Silver Spires (14 page)

There are six of us in this enormous bedroom, or dormitory as it's actually called, and we are all sitting cross-legged on our beds, talking across the room to each other. When I look at my duvet cover I can imagine for a moment that I'm still at home, as we've all brought our own duvet covers with us, but then when my eyes travel round the room I feel a million miles away from home because everything else is so different.

The dormitory is completely square with a lovely green carpet, and the walls are painted in a colour that I would describe as apple white. My dad's a painter and decorator, so I know lots of different paint shades, as I've seen them on colour charts and in brochures and things. There are two big windows, with curtains that are patterned in dark green and white splodges and go right down to the floor. I think all the green in here is because the Year Seven dormitories in all six boarding houses are named after precious stones, and ours is called Emerald, which is a beautiful green stone. The light seems to stream through the windows, which makes it really bright and I love the way it all feels so modern and luxurious. I've never ever stayed in such a beautiful room before.

I must stop thinking that I'm
staying
here like a visitor, though, because I'm actually
living
here, and that feels so exciting – but also scary, as I'm not used to it yet.

Each of us six has our own big piece of furniture that consists of a desk for our laptops and things, some drawers, a narrow wardrobe, and a ladder that you have to climb up to get to the bed. There are two little lamps – one built into the desk area and one in the headboard so we can read in bed until lights out at half past nine.

Actually, at the moment only five of the six of us are sitting on our beds chatting. The sixth girl, Antonia, who comes from Italy, is sorting through her photos and not really joining in the conversation. She's very pretty, with masses of curly black hair and lovely olive skin. I feel a bit sorry for her, as I think she's only not saying much because her English isn't very good. And I wonder if she really understands what the rest of us are saying. We keep trying to draw her in by chatting about Italy, but she stays quiet, and I'm starting to wonder whether she's just naturally a quiet type of person.

“Have
you
ever been to Italy, Nicole?” Sasha asked me just then, giving me a lovely warm smile. The first thing that struck me about Sasha was how still and calm her face is, with a really open, friendly expression.

I shook my head, because the only country I've ever been to is France. “I went to Paris on a school trip last year though. It was totally brilliant!” I said, speaking quickly, as a picture of the Eiffel Tower and the excitement I'd felt when I first set eyes on it came flooding into my mind. Then I realized that I probably sounded a bit overexcited, like someone who wasn't used to going abroad on holiday, and although that was true, I didn't want anyone to know. I felt sure the others would have visited all sorts of foreign places, and it was important that I didn't come across as different from them. I'd drummed that into myself so often, because I was determined to fit in properly here. Silver Spires is my big,
big
chance to prove myself. And so I gave myself a little telling-off, which turned, inside my head, into a teacher's comment on a report –
Nicole must try to think before opening her mouth
.

Sasha smiled at me. “I agree, Paris is lovely! Did you do a boat trip on the River Seine?”

I shook my head. “We didn't have time. Did you?”

Sasha nodded and her eyes danced. “But I liked the little canals in Venice better. We went on a gondola there. It was amazing!”

I glanced at Antonia, wondering whether she might have something to say about Venice, but she still stayed silent. Poor Antonia. Perhaps she was feeling homesick. She'd had much further to come than any of the rest of us, after all. She was taking photos out of a dark brown shiny box with gold edging, and sorting them into piles. She'd already stuck one or two on the pinboard above her bed. A wisp of worry flitted through me then, because Antonia's gleaming box was just as expensive-looking as her suitcases. I'd seen her arriving at school when my parents were driving away, and I'd had to stop myself from staring as, one after another, her smart suitcases had been taken out of the amazingly long, luxurious-looking car.

Of course, I'd instantly worried that I hadn't brought anywhere near enough clothes and stuff to school with me in my two big, squidgy bags. But then I didn't have any more clothes to bring. Thank goodness Mr. Monk, the caretaker for our boarding house, had taken most of our cases and bags down to the storeroom. Having them all in here earlier had made me feel a bit uncomfortable, because I couldn't help noticing that mine were definitely the scruffiest. I'd felt a bit sorry for Mr. Monk when I'd realized that, because they didn't have any wheels like everyone else's cases, he'd have to carry mine along the corridors as well as down the stairs. I'd even offered to help him, but he'd chuckled and said, “No, love, you're all right! Unless you're here for a job as Forest Ash porter!” I knew I'd said the wrong thing, and I felt embarrassed, but I liked Mr. Monk instantly.

I also loved our boarding house, Forest Ash, straight away. All the boarding houses are named after trees and I thought Forest Ash sounded the most interesting and magicky. From one of our dormitory windows we can see the forest of ash trees in the distance. I'd read all about our boarding house name at home and learned that ash wood is very hard and is used to make charcoal. And in the old days, the charcoal burners would have actually lived in the forest and chopped the trees down themselves and burned the wood to make the charcoal in a special pit dug in the ground. I could just imagine that.

“Which part of Italy do you come from, Antonia?” Izzy suddenly asked, in a bright, clear voice. Everything about Izzy is bright. She moves so quickly and gracefully, like a gazelle.

“Milan,” Antonia replied, with a dreamy faraway look in her eyes. She'd pronounced it the Italian way,
Mee-lon,
but she repeated it with an English accent. Then she sighed, and looked as though she was about to say something else but had changed her mind. And next thing, she was straight back to her photo sorting.

I saw Izzy bite her lip and look down, and I guessed she felt sorry for Antonia like I did. But a moment later I wanted to giggle, because the girl called Emily, who I thought might turn out to be the craziest in our dormitory, suddenly flopped back on her bed and said in her lovely Irish accent, “There's sooooo much we've got to get used to, isn't there?”

It wasn't just me who found her funny, because everyone, apart from Antonia, burst out laughing at the way Emily had sounded so dramatic. That made her sit bolt upright again, wide-eyed and palms turned up. Then she deliberately went a bit cross-eyed. “What?” she said, pretending to be indignant. “What's so funny?”

I couldn't help noticing that, even though she started flicking her head from side to side to look at us all individually, her hair seemed to stay completely still. It was the thickest mass of red hair I'd ever seen, and she'd tied it back into a rough sort of ponytail, but there was just as much hair out of the ponytail as in.

It was Bryony who answered Emily. She scrambled down her own ladder and up Emily's, then sat down cross-legged beside her, wearing a big grin. “It's the way you said it like it's going to be really painful getting used to everything! But I think it's going to be great!”

“So do I!” I said, feeling another burst of happiness fizzling around inside me. But the happiness was all mixed up with flutters of nervousness because, although I felt sure I'd love Silver Spires school, I also knew it was going to be incredibly different from everything I'd been used to before. And not just because of it being a boarding school. The big worry for me was that all the girls here seemed so different somehow too.

Emily had already explained that her parents ran a farm in southern Ireland, with twelve fields full of cows, and outbuildings and stables and paddocks, so they must own masses of land. And Sasha had got photos on her laptop as her screen saver, and one of them turned out to be her house. I couldn't believe how enormous and grand it looked, with beautiful tiles all down the top half, and the bottom part painted gleaming white.

“Thees ees my house,” Antonia suddenly said, as she pinned another photo on her noticeboard.

I think we were all so surprised that she'd volunteered something which wasn't just an answer to one of our questions, that we jumped down from our beds and crowded round her desk instantly to look at the photo. My nervousness grew as I moved up next to Izzy, dreading seeing a palace or something. But I actually got a nice shock, because the house was only a small chalet. I admit it wasn't as small as our terraced house back home, but it was still small compared to Sasha's mansion. It was on its own at the foot of a mountain covered in snow, and there were lovely fir trees lined up behind it. In front of the main door to the house stood a man and woman.

“Who are those people, Antonia?” asked Bryony.

“Nonna Maria and Nonno Paulo,” said Antonia slowly, as though she loved saying their names out loud.

“What's Nonno?” I asked her without thinking. Then I felt my cheeks going pink in case it was something amazingly obvious that everyone knew.

“Nonno ees grandfather,” Antonia said rolling the
r
.

“And Nonna is granny!” I finished off, desperate to show that I wasn't stupid as well as knowing no Italian.

“Oh, grandma, right!” said Bryony. And I'm sure she wasn't meaning to correct me, but I felt my cheeks turning pink. Of course it's
grandma
, not
granny
.
Think, Nicole. Just think before you speak.

I couldn't believe I'd already made a mistake, because when I'd first found out for sure that I'd be coming here to Silver Spires, I told myself that it was really important that I act just like all the other girls so that people would like me. It wasn't that I wanted to be particularly popular, it was just all part of fitting in properly. And I knew from my primary school that if there was anything at all different about you, you got teased or mocked, like the boy in my class who was no good at sport and the girl in Year Five who had a lisp. There were other children like that too, and I always tried to be nice to them. But the trouble was, if the king kids, as we called them – the kids who ruled the class and the playground – saw you being nice to one of the losers, as they called them, then that made you a loser too.

“It's a lovely house, Antonia,” I quickly said.

“Eet ees our holiday home.”

I swallowed and felt small and anxious again, especially when Bryony asked where it was and then said in a matter-of-fact voice that her second home was in France, and Izzy joined in too, saying she had a holiday home in Spain.

“Well,
we
haven't got a holiday home,” said Sasha, going back to her own bed. A nice little wave of relief came over me, until she added, “But Dad's got a flat in London for when he works late.”

I was dreading anyone asking me about our tiny house, so it was a relief when Izzy changed the subject.

“Hey, Nicole, your hair's really long, isn't it?” She was standing shoulder to shoulder with me. “Look,” she said, clutching the ends of her own hair and of mine. “Yours is at least four centimetres longer than mine. Does it grow quickly, or have you been growing it for ages?”

“It does grow quite quickly,” I said, feeling safe in this conversation, “but I wish it was blonde or…anything but mousy really.”

“Well, watch out, you two, you've got competition from over here,” said Bryony, tugging on a clump of her own really short, dark, spiky hair.

That made us all laugh again. Then, as we each climbed the ladder back up to our own beds, I had a lovely feeling of excitement, because I'd just noticed through the dormitory window that the sun had come out from behind a cloud, and a picture of the main school building with its sparkling silver spires had come into my mind.

The main building is what I remember most from when I came to my interview last term. It's very old indeed, and Ms. Carmichael, the headmistress of the whole school, said it was in a gothic style, which explains the little turrets and diamond-shaped panes of glass in the windows that glint all the time, and the heavy, dark front door with its brass latch. Inside the building there are beams and columns and beautifully carved wood. But it's the outside that I love the best and that's because of the tall thin spires that rise up from the roof. They shine like pure silver when the sun catches them. I can't wait till it's teatime and we go over to the canteen, because then I can see that beautiful building again.

The first time I ever saw it was on the Silver Spires website. When Mum told me I was going to take an exam to see if I was clever enough to get a scholarship to come here, I wanted to see what the school looked like. As soon as I saw the building, even before I'd looked at any other photos, I set my heart on being here. And from that day on, I worked as hard as I could, doing masses of extra reading in the hope that it might help me in the exam. I remember how nervous I was, sitting in a huge hall with loads of other girls, knowing that the only way I'd be able to come here was if I managed to win a scholarship, which meant getting at least eighty-five per cent in the exam. I finished my paper really quickly, and it seemed ages before I saw anyone else putting their pen down, so I kept going over and over my answers and rereading the questions to check I hadn't missed one out or done anything really stupid. And then, finally, the lady at the front told us to finish off, and after that I had two whole weeks to wait to hear whether I would be allowed to come to this dream school.