Cataindar

CHAPTER ONE-AND-A-HALF

It was the last day of school. Luisa showed her school I.D. card to the guard, pushing the rungs of the turnstile and passing under the plastic arch of the metal detectors. The summer sun shone through the barbed wire above, baking the grey concrete buildings and gravel playground.

Typically, no one grassed on Terry so no action was taken but the school was alight with gossip about the fight. Oliver bravely came in the next day, one eye swollen shut and his face puffy and bruised.

Luisa sat in English, her favourite subject. They were wrapping up their final class, having already been given a huge homework project that would be used to tier them into sets next year. The project would also serve to keep them busy over their summer holiday. Matthew Tomlinson sat on the table in front of Luisa's. She was surprised to catch herself thinking that it would be their last class like this, and she would actually miss viewing the back of his head. His dark hair was as healthy and thick as an otter's coat. Luisa enjoyed looking at it in class as it shone and reflected the light of the changing seasons. She didn't know how or why he had ended up in the White Manor zoo, only that he had come to White Manor six months ago from a private school in London. On Matthew's first day, the boys in her class had made fun of his postman-shiny shoes and had taken one off and thrown it out the third-floor window. She remembered the shock and fear on Matthew's face as the boys manhandled him. As the months went by he put his hand up and spoke less and less, and when he did speak his accent changed from well-spoken English to more of the 'White Manor Chat'.

Matthew lived close enough to the school to be allowed home for lunch and he exercised the privilege with devotion. He vanished during school breaks. He had not made any friends at White Manor, but to Luisa's knowledge, he had not made any out-and-out enemies. He turned around towards Luisa's table, leaning back precariously on just two legs of his chair. "Hey, Luisa." he whispered, "Can you help me out here? I am on question nine and I could do with a hand. I mean, umm, I would try my table, but..." He gestured to his table-mates loudly daring each other to push a piece of string farther and farther up their noses, then swallow it down and pull it out their mouths.

Luisa grimaced. "That's disgusting." She looked down at her paper. Wait a second, question nine? She glanced up to see Matthew's face studying her own. His brown eyes held a depth that hinted at a mature understanding of the world, like he had seen some stuff. His face had begun to change from a boy to a man, with his top lip darkening.

He seriously should know the answer to that question.

Emma, the freckled girl sitting next to Luisa, leaned over. "Oi, Matthew," she whispered. "I've got the answer to question nine, it's... HAVE A SHAVE MATE!" The girls at Luisa's table burst out laughing.

Matthew went bright crimson and the dusting of hair on his top lip to which she had referred beaded with sweat. "Fine." he murmured, allowing his chair to bang back down onto four legs, taking himself back to his table and out of the conversation.

Later that day, Luisa waited in the abnormally quiet lunch line. Even the lack of danger made her feel a little anxious. There was always a base-level of carnage happening at White Manor school, so when it was still, a feeling of foreboding gripped her. Her previous class had been Drama and Luisa and her group had been dismissed late for putting excessive swearing in their final Drama piece (not Luisa's idea)—which meant she had arrived too late to meet Stacey and Stacey's friends that she usually lined up with. She was standing by herself, almost at the front of lunch-line in the corridor outside the canteen, fighting the instinct to hold onto her elbow and look at the floor. Hopefully no year elevens come by. She imagined pulling the webbing of an invisibility cloak around her shoulders and throwing the hood over her head, snapping out of vision. The thought of it helped her relax a little. Let the White Manor boys do their thing and leave me to get through these last few hours of the term unscathed.