Chasing the Browns

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Thank God she’d only lost consciousness. I wasn’t allowed to see her, and she was home for the rest of the week because of her concussion, but I knew that by her cheery tone at the end of the phone every evening she was feeling completely fine. If not, better than I was.

My social life slowly began pulling together the next week. On Monday, we had double Biology in the morning. I got a lucky escape when Poppy said that the school council needed volunteers to survey the students on whether or not they wanted to have the homecoming dance. I still thought that the dance itself was a terrible idea, especially in England and not America, but if it got me out of Biology I wasn’t going to complain. I ended up going into Mr Granger’s classroom, anyway, because I had to survey everyone. Poppy and I entered the classroom with our clipboards, looking all smug as we interrupted the teacher.

Mr Granger shot us a look. ‘As I was saying, I have planned a practical investigation for this week to end our topic. If Mr Banks here’ – he turned towards Kai – ‘can manage to behave for two lessons, I will let you choose you partners. Are we clear, Mr Banks?’

We all knew that that was never going to happen. In the end, the vast majority of the class were all for the dance seeing as our school never had anything but the odd disco here and there to raise money. The last one hadn’t gone down very well. Only eleven people out of our whole year bought tickets, so it’d been cancelled.

Lunchtime that day was even better. Mr Granger (he seemed to be everywhere that day) entered the hall with a girl I didn’t recognise. Seeing as she was being escorted, I assumed she was new. She had the most beautiful blend of ginger and auburn hair that fell in loose curls at her shoulders. She had a few freckles here and there on her face, a bright smile with teeth almost whiter than Jack’s and pale skin that added to her facial features to make her seem even prettier.

I hated her instantly.

Jack invited me onto his table – which consisted of me, himself, Vince, Kai, a girl named Kelly, a guy named Alex and an openly glaring Nick. Mr Granger caught sight of us. ‘This is Rita McClarkinson, I hope you’ll all make her feel very welcome.’ He rushed away very quickly.

As soon as she started talking, I said close to nothing. She was nice, she laughed a lot, and she smiled a lot, too. In fact, she was very nice.

That made me hate her even more. And she had a posh name.

Just as the bell went for the end of lunch, Jack nudged me. ‘You haven’t said very much.’

I shrugged. ‘Yeah…I’m not really used to sitting here with “you guys”,’ I said, making quotation marks with my fingers. I was missing Marie, too.

Kelly pointed her fork at me as she stood up, grabbing her bag. ‘We need to get her to talk more.’ She turned to Alex. ‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’

‘Truth or dare tomorrow lunch time?’ he guessed.

She winked. ‘You got it. See you, guys.’

On Tuesday there weren’t anymore surveys left to do. Poppy was missing more lessons because auditions for a school play would be on at the end of the week and she was helping with finalising the script.

‘Hey, you want to know what the play is going to be?’ she asked. She was walking me to Biology before she went off to the drama studio.

‘OK.’

‘It’s Oliver.’

‘Oliver?’ I repeated. ‘As in Oliver Twist?’

She nodded.