The sister in the dark

Chapter 9

The harsh bleeping of an alarm clock pulls me from slumber. I stick my hand out to bash the snooze button, but my arm whacks straight into a wall. Strange. I pull myself up in bed to have a closer look at my surroundings. Then I remember. I'm at Stowe School, a place of education and mystery, a place of death. A place where Rose once was.

It's Monday. The first day of school. So I pull on my school uniform, tie my hair into pigtails and go downstairs to meet Hirah. There she is, waiting for me outside the common room, looking very different in her uniform.

"Shall we go for breakfast then?" she asks. "We can probably go meet Milly before school if we go now."

I nod in agreement and follow her out to the main school building. With the sun rising behind it, it's beautiful. Doves are flying onto the roof and as always it makes me feel like I'm in a magic world.

However, the feeling doesn't last for long because it's cold and I want to go inside and eat. I walk up into the huge doors of Stowe School and walk through to the dining room.

Inside, there are boys and girls alike seated at tables and talking while waiting for their food and while eating their food. Hirah takes me up to the counter to order.

Yum...

I find myself drooling at the menu, the pastries, the toast, the meat options. It's all so much better than anything I would have at home. Hirah urges me to make a decision though, unfortunately for me I have to hurry up and decide. I wonder if Rose felt like this the first time she saw the menu.

"Um..." I say to the dinner lady. "Can I please have a bagel and, um, a glass of milk and some bacon please?"

"Sure darling," she replies and rushes off to get it ready.

Hirah has gone to get a table for us, so I look around for her in the hall. She's sitting waiting for me at table number 9, a piece of paper in her hands.

"Your timetable," she tells me when I get over, "we are mostly in the same lessons, but there are a few when we're separate."

The food arrives and it makes my mouth water even more than the menu did. The bacon is so much better than anything Mother would make at home for breakfast, the bagel perfect and the milk creamy. All of it is much more delicious than anything I have ever had.

After finishing, I lick my fingers and go for seconds. All of this luxurious food was laid out in front of me and temptation won out. We don't have time to meet up with Milly - I was too busy eating as much as I could.

However, I almost cause Hirah and I to be late for our first lesson, mathematics, or so the timetable says. I would have just called it maths. We get in just on time, take our places at our desks and take out our books and pens.

Then the door opens and the teacher comes in, followed by another. Immediately I know I am going to hate maths.

Because it turns out this subject is one that the headmaster is very good at.

And it turns out that he is going to be sitting in a corner, watching us, for the whole lesson.