frozen within time

chapter 16 - akhill high school

'Holly is new ---- so I'd like you all to give her a warm welcome,' beamed miss jeffreys.

The class murmured indistinct greetings and someone made a quiet farting noise, but miss jeffreys, sitting back down with a discreet smooth of her tartan skirt, did not notice. She was close to retirement age and very good and not hearing things after so many years practice.

'Holly, perhapse you'd like to come up and tell the rest of the class a little hit about yourself,' said miss jeffreys.

Kristen groaned and she let her forehead flop into her palms as holly skipped happily to the front of the class. Kristen raised her eyes fearfully as her great-aunt turned and smiled at everyone and began to speak in a voice like the queen (despite the many hours Kristen had spent trying to beat this habit out of her).

'Hello, everyone! My name is holly . . . .er . . . . Richardson, (thinking up a name for herself) but everybody calls me holly. I'm jolly pleased to meet you all. I know it's going to be frightfully difficult to catch up with you all, as I've not been to a school quite like this before, but I mean to try. I hope you'll all be kind and not think I'm a total clot when I get into scrapes with algebra. Algebra's probably my worst subject! I'm always getting into scrapes with algebra.'

There was a stunned silence.

Miss jeffreys coughed. 'Um . . . . Perhapse you could tell us a bit about your last school, holly?' She prompted.

'Oh---oh yes.' Holly went slightly pink. Kristen knew it was because she was about to make up a "fib" about her last school. Holly was a hopeless liar.

'Well, you'd probably think it was a bit qu----peculiar, really. Not a bit like this. I grew up on a hip----hippy commune, I think you might call it. We all lived in a sort of a camp in the woods and everyone sort of helped everyone else and we got taught by the grown ups, in the big . . . . Um . . . . Well . . . . We called it a wigwam.'

Everyone sat in yet more stunned silence, although Kristen very nearly moaned aloud. They had rehearsed and rehearsed this! And now holly was making bits up. They'd never mentioned a wigwam!

'Everyone ate together and we all slept in hammocks and cooked over open fires.' Holly was getting into her stride now. 'We grew our own food and caught rabbits to eat. I can skin a rabbit like anything!'

There were gasps and the vegetarian girls clutched their friendship bracelets and whimpered.

'But, as you can probably guess, I don't know an awful lot about the twenty-first century . . . . I mean, that is, I haven't had much to do with television and CD-Ron's and DBDs and such like.'

A titter ran around the class. Kristen tried to work out whether it was a mean titter or a friendly titter. Too early to tell.

'I've come here ---- with my brother Karl----because father thinks we need to get into a proper school now, so we can take proper CGSE exams. We're living with Kristen and alex, because they're sort of related to us.'

Kristen flintched, as several of her classmates turned to stare at her, and then felt guilty. she was going to have to look after holly and it was no good pretending it wasn't going to be embaressing.

'And they're both absolutely super!' Concluded holly. And the class collapsed into hysterical laughter.

Holly beamed around them all, her face awash with confusion, worry. And hope. Kristen reckoned her face could stop working so hard. It needn't bother with hope.