Eva's Journey (6 page)

Chapter Eight

N
ext morning, the door-bell rang while I was having my breakfast. I raced to answer it, wondering if it could possibly be good news.

Was this my reward for oiling the wheels of Madam Margarita's wheelchair?

Was this my fairy godmother, come to rescue me from my rubbish new life?

It was Victoria.

‘I've come to wish you luck on your first day in your new school,' she said.

I hugged her.

‘That's so, so nice of you,' I said. ‘But aren't you going to be late for school now?'

She shook her head.

‘It's fine. My dad drove me. He's waiting
outside, and he's going to drop me at school on his way to work.'

I felt a sudden stab of jealousy.

Would my dad ever again have a car?

Would he ever again have a job to drive to?

There was a long silence.

‘I'm scared,' I said in the end.

‘What exactly are you scared of?' she asked.

I shrugged.

‘I'm not really sure. The whole thing is just scary. What if the kids in Woodpark don't like me? What if they're really rough? What if they've got knives and stuff?'

Victoria gave me a quick hug.

‘It's not the Wild West,' she said. ‘It won't be
that
bad.'

Easy for her to say!

There was another long silence.

‘Nice uniform,' said Victoria in the end.

Why did she have to mention the uniform? Didn't she think I felt bad enough already?

I looked down at myself, and tried not to cry.

My new school uniform was totally, totally revolting. The skirt was made of thick scratchy material and the jumper wasn't a whole lot better. Both of them were ugly, ugly bottle-green. Bottle green is a good colour for bottles – for clothes it
so
doesn't work. I thought of my beautiful, well-cut Abbey School uniform, which was squashed up in a box in the garage.

‘What's with the shoes?' asked Victoria, looking at the ugly brown things on my feet.

‘You've still got hundreds of nice shoes, so why aren't you wearing any of them?'

I sighed.

‘None of my nice shoes fit in with the “dress code” of Woodpark School.'

‘Woodpark has a dress code?'

I nodded.

‘It came in a letter. It goes on for three pages, but it could have been written in one sentence –
if it's nice, you're not allowed to wear it.'

Victoria laughed.

‘And do you know,' I said, warming to my
subject. ‘There's a banner hanging over the front door of the school, and it says NO FUN ALLOWED HERE!'

‘No way!' said Victoria with a horrified gasp.

‘Well, actually I haven't been there yet,' I admitted. ‘But who knows?'

Victoria laughed again and hugged me.

‘I'm glad you've still got your sense of humour,' she said.

I laughed too.

‘I think I'm going to need it.'

A bit later, Mum and Dad walked me to school.

‘Isn't this nice?' said Dad who was still trying to see the bright side in the disaster that was our lives. ‘If I had a job, I wouldn't have time to escort you on your first day in your new school.'

I made a face.

‘If you had a job, I wouldn't be going to this stupid school anyway. I'd be on the way to The Abbey, on the bus, on my own.'

‘Oh,' said Dad, and we walked the rest of the
way in silence.

‘Here we are,' said Mum brightly as we stopped outside my new school.

I gulped. I'd never looked closely at this building before. I'd only ever seen it through the tinted windows of Mum's jeep as we drove past on the way to tennis or pony club.

The walls were grey.

The windows were grey.

The bars on the windows were grey.

The sky had even turned grey in sympathy.

Why couldn't I be getting off the bus at The Abbey, looking forward to hearing about the exotic places my friends had visited over the holidays?

Or why couldn't I be walking along to Victoria's school, looking forward to meeting the friends she'd told me so much about?

Why did I have to be in this grim, grey place?

‘Don't make me go in there,' I said. ‘It's too scary. Please bring me home.'

Mum shook her head.

‘Don't be silly, Eva. You have to go to school.'

I had a brainwave.

‘I know. Now that Dad has no job, why doesn't he home-school me? He knows heaps of stuff. He'd be a great teacher.'

‘You wouldn't say that if you'd been there when I was learning to drive,' muttered Mum darkly.

Just then three very scary-looking boys went past, pushing and shoving each other as they went through the school gates.

‘Did you see them?' I asked when they were safely out of earshot.

Mum put on her bright voice again.

‘You shouldn't judge by appearances, Eva. I'm sure they're perfectly nice boys.'

‘Why don't I invite them home for tea this evening then?' I said, and watched as Mum's face went pale.

‘Come on,' said Dad. ‘If we don't go inside you're going to be late.'

I knew there was no point in arguing any more, so I followed my parents, as they led the way into
my new school.

Mum and Dad shoved me in the door of the principal's office, and after a few polite words, they got to home again.

I wasn't so lucky.

There was no escape for me.

A few minutes later, I was following the principal, Mrs Parker along the corridor. There was a strong smell like old boiled cabbage.

Why couldn't I be back at The Abbey, which smelled of perfume and floor polish?

While we walked, Mrs Parker was muttering about school rules, and locker keys, and fire drills.

I was muttering along in time, like I actually cared.

Why did I need to know all that stuff? This was only a temporary blip. Soon I'd be back in my old school, where I belonged.

At last we stopped at a classroom door.

‘Here we are,' said Mrs Parker brightly. ‘Sixth Class. After you, my dear.'

She opened the door and pushed me inside. I stood
there wishing that the ugly grey floor would swallow me up.

It was weeks since I'd had my nails or my hair done.

I had no make up on. (It was against the dress code of course.)

I was wearing the ugliest clothes I have ever, ever stood up in.

And thirty pairs of eyes were staring at me.

I tried to look like I didn't care.

I tried to think of nice stuff.

I tried to think of Madam Margarita's words.

Help people, and you will get your reward.

How soon could I start helping people?

And how soon would I get out of here?

‘Mr Gowing, this is Eva,' said Mrs Parker, after what felt like three hours. ‘She's your new student.'

A boy at the back of the class waited until the teachers were looking the other way, and then he flicked a piece of folded paper in my direction. The paper flew into the air and then hit me on the cheek. It really hurt.

I turned to stare at the boy.

Maybe it was time to start helping people.

I'd happily help him to eat his exercise book.

Mr Gowing was talking to me.

‘Blah … Blah … Welcome … work hard … blah, blah and more blah.'

He pointed to an empty chair. There was a boy sitting in the chair next to it.

I was supposed to sit next to a boy?

What if I needed someone to tell me if my hair was OK or if my tights were laddered?

Something told me it was a bit soon to start arguing, so I walked over and sat down.

And so my first day in my new school began.

Chapter Nine

I
looked around at the ugly grey walls of the classroom, and felt a sudden pang of sadness as I remembered the wood-panelled walls of The Abbey.

I looked at the sullen-faced boy next to me who smelled of chips, and thought of Emily, who sat next to me at The Abbey. Emily was funny and clever and smelled of violets.

I blinked quickly trying to hold back the tears.

The classroom windows were closed and it was too warm. The sullen-faced boy looked like he was ready to doze off. Outside, the sun had come out. It was shining merrily, taunting us with its freedom. The stiff material of the school uniform was scratching the back of my legs, and my feet
were sore from dragging around the ugly, heavy shoes.

I had to escape from this awful place.

And Madam Margarita's plan was the only one I could think of.

I should probably explain right now, that I know this whole thing sounds totally stupid.

A few months earlier, if you had told me I'd be visiting a fortune-teller, I wouldn't have believed you.

If you'd told me that I'd believe a fortune-teller, and actually do what she suggested in an effort to change my life, I'd have rolled around the floor and laughed until I was sick.

But a lot had changed in those few months.

And to me, the choice was clear – do what Madam Margarita suggested, or do nothing.

And doing nothing just didn't bear thinking about.

I tried not to think too carefully about how exactly the whole thing was going to work – about how exactly I was going to get my old life back, 
just by helping other people.

But I'd worry about the details later.

It was time to get started.

I looked around the classroom.

Where was the unhappy person who needed my help?

Well, for starters,
I
was unhappy.

But that probably didn't count.

I rested my chin on my hands, and gazed around for a bit. Everyone in the room looked unhappy. But maybe that was only because it was maths class. Even the teacher, scribbling long lines of rubbish on the blackboard, looked like he'd rather be somewhere, anywhere else.

Mr Gowing was explaining a maths problem, and telling us about some boring old Ancient Greek maths guy. I'd already done the same problem in my old school. I hadn't found it fun first time round, so how exactly was it supposed to have improved in the months since then?

Half way through the maths class, I found
someone who definitely needed some help.

‘Yesss,' I whispered to myself.

The boy beside me woke up and stared at me like I was an idiot.

‘
Yesss
, I really love maths,' I whispered, and he looked at me like I was an even bigger idiot.

As soon as the boy was busy gouging another hole in the desk with his compass, I took a closer look at the lucky girl – the first person in my ‘help people and get out of here' project.

She was small and pretty, and she was sitting right at the front of the class. Her name was Petronella (which, on its own, was a good enough reason to be unhappy, I thought).

The other reason was that the teacher kept picking on her. Whenever she even whispered to the girl next to her, Mr Gowing shouted at her to be quiet – like whispering was this huge crime – and like the rest of the class wasn't whispering madly whenever he turned to face the blackboard.

And the worst thing was, no matter what Mr Gowing said, Petronella never even blinked. It was
almost like she was so used to being picked on, that she didn't care any more.

The lesson dragged on and on and on. Soon I knew far more than I ever wanted to know about geometry.

I looked around and all I could see were glazed eyes and bored faces – it was like I'd dropped into the set of a very bad zombie movie.

Suddenly Petronella dropped her book to the ground with a clatter. I jumped and a few of the boys laughed.

Mr Gowing spun on his heel.

‘Petronella,' he said crossly. ‘I think you did that deliberately, just to annoy me.'

For once, Petronella reacted.

‘That's not fair,' she said. ‘It was an accident.'

Mr Gowing walked to her desk and leaned down towards her with a mean look on his face.

‘So, Petronella,' he hissed. ‘So I'm not being fair. And what are you going to do about it – run home and tell your mama?'

There were a few sniggers from the back of the
class.

How could anyone find this funny?

What kind of a sick school had I ended up in?

Petronella took a deep breath.

‘Actually, I think I will tell my mother,' she said.

Now Mr Gowing gave a laugh.

‘Ha,' he said. ‘Promises, promises. I know you'll never tell on me. You're just too chicken.'

Petronella didn't reply. I looked around in horror. Some of the kids were giggling. Even worse, some looked totally bored, like this kind of thing happened every day.

I made up my mind.

Mr Gowing mustn't be allowed to treat the poor girl like that.

It just wasn't right.

All I had to do was figure out a way to help her.

There's an ad on TV that says if you see someone being bullied at school, then you should talk to your teacher.

But what were you supposed to do if the bully
was
your teacher?

I had to talk to Petronella.

I had to help her to be strong.

I had to persuade her to talk to her mother about the way Mr Gowing was bullying her.

Or maybe she should go to the principal?

Perhaps there was a board of governers that should know?

I turned to the back page of my maths book and started to make notes.