A Storm of Paper Starlings

9. What Families Are For

At school on Monday, the noise hurts. I hardly look up at all while my body instinctively skirts everything with a pulse. It's not that I hate people. I just don't have space for these people.

I don't know how else to say it. When I'm at school, there's this buzzing feeling like I shouldn't be here, like I'm not really here at all. But these people? They belong like the graffitied textbooks and desk-blunted compasses. They file through the years, one batch after another, replenishing the school's stock of successes and failures and could-try-harders. I'm sure their families like them and can tell them apart, and I'm sure most of them have more interesting lives than mine, but they still feel like furniture. Furniture I can't even sit on. I'm a girl with freshly pressed textbooks and a sharp compass. I'm also a girl without a chair.

Ruby's sitting on two stacked chairs just to spite me. I care for about five seconds, then I find a photo of a horse with my head photoshopped on it taped to my desk. Someone scrawled filthy half-breed across it in red pen. It hits like it always does, like my stomach is sinking. I go momentarily rigid and dump my bag on top of the picture, so Leia won't see it. She'll only end up getting us into more trouble, and I'm in a bad enough mood already.

I've had too much of a day and it's not even nine yet. I woke in the night with an itchy scalp so many times—thank you, phantom stitches—that by five a.m. I was rubbing oil into my scalp like a scaly weirdo.

My mood isn't about to get better because after registration, Leia asks to borrow a pen and drags my bag towards her. She goes red and screw-faced when she sees the picture.

A second later, her hand's in the air. "Mr Connor, can you come and look at this, please?"

Mr Connor wanders over, his saggy cardigan pockets swinging like pendulums with the weight of confiscated contraband. "What is it?"

Leia continues in the same loud voice. "I think Dolores Umbridge has been here, sir."

Oh god.

"Dolores... what?" He looks at the photo, and his mouth tightens. "Who did this?"

"I told you, Sir. Dolores did it. You call him Jay Garvey, but the rest of us call him Dolores. Or if you're lucky enough to be his friend... Dolly."

Jay goes red. Redder than his bandaged nose. Redder even than his incriminating fingers. "It weren't me."

"Is that so?" says Mr Connor. "Then what's that red pen smudged across your hand?"

"But I'm left-handed, innit?"

He is such a twat.

"You've been in my form for four years. Never in all that time have you been left-handed, Jay. Or should I call you Dolly?"

Leia whispers, "Mission accomplished" in my ear.

The class sniggers.

"Get yourself to the head's office," says Mr Connor. "You too, Violet."

"I didn't do anything."

He smiles softly. "Don't worry. It's about something else. Off you go." He makes a shooing motion then points to the photo stuck to my desk. "Take that with you."

I peel it off and follow Jay out. Thankfully, I only need to make it down one corridor with him.

"Your friend's got a big mouth."

I glance sideways at him. "Not as big as your nose."

"I guess you think—"

"Don't talk to me."