Raggy Maggie. Barry Hutchison

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СКАЧАТЬ angel, charging out of the darkness, swinging wildly with a baseball bat. She drove him back, buying us time to get away.

      She’d stayed with me for most of the day, helping me when no one else could. How many times did she save my life? Twice? Three times? I couldn’t even remember.

      Without her I never would have beaten Mr Mumbles. I owed her everything – my life, Mum’s, Nan’s. We all would have died had it not been for Ameena.

      But I couldn’t tell the class that.

      ‘Earth to Kyle. Earth to Kyle.’

      I blinked back into the present. Mr Preston was standing there, waving a hand slowly in front of my face. I could feel all eyes in the room on me. Somewhere off to the left, someone let out a low snigger.

      ‘Just bumped into her outside my house,’ I said. ‘We…we hung out for a bit.’

      ‘What was her name then?’ asked someone else.

      ‘Ameena,’ I replied. My mouth was going dry. I felt like I was being interrogated by the Secret Service.

      ‘What kind of name’s that?’

      ‘A made-up one by the sounds of things,’ sneered Billy. He and his neighbour cackled and exchanged a high-five. I glanced up at Mr Preston imploringly, but he wasn’t ready to let me off the hook just yet.

      ‘And where is she now?’ he asked, the corners of his mouth twitching. ‘This new friend of yours?’

      I was free to answer truthfully this time. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see her again after that.’

      Mr Preston took his hands out of his pockets and waved them as if he was conducting an orchestra. ‘Ready, everyone? One, two, three…’

      On cue, the whole class joined together in one collective ‘Awwww!’

      ‘Fascinating stuff, Mr Alexander, truly fascinating,’ said Mr Preston sarcastically. ‘Now sit down, and please – for your sake as well as mine – don’t be late again.’

      I shuffled sideways along the slow-moving line, holding my breath when I passed the soggy mound of cabbage that seemed to be crawling up and out of the plastic tub it lurked in.

      Turkey burgers – I could hardly believe it. The first day back to school after the Christmas holidays and the canteen was serving turkey burgers. Someone somewhere had decided this was the perfect choice for the first-day-back menu. Incredible.

      ‘You not meeting your new bird for lunch then?’ I heard someone shout.

      Billy Gibb had barged into the queue a few places ahead of me. He was staring at me now, waiting for some kind of response. I just shook my head and looked down at my cracked wooden tray. I didn’t need this. Not today.

      I could spend all day describing the things that made Billy such an unpleasant person to be around. I could talk about his stupid, wispy facial hair. I could mention the way his nostrils were always flared and curving upwards, as if a dog had taken a crap on his top lip and his nose was doing its best to crawl away. I could even go on about his smell – fifty per cent stale cigarette smoke, fifty per cent even staler sweat, one hundred per cent revolting.

      Really, though, what bothered me most was his personality. Or, to put it more accurately, his total lack of one.

      ‘She must’ve been a right dog to fancy you,’ he continued, trying to goad me into a fight. I wasn’t going to rise to it. I was better than that. Plus, he could kick my head in with one leg tied behind his back.

      I heard him and a few of his mates jeering at me as I picked up my tray and walked away, but I tried not to listen. The healthy-eating counter didn’t have a queue – the healthy-eating counter never had a queue – so I could hopefully get served there and have my lunch eaten before he’d even ordered his.

      The dinner lady on duty had her back to me as I approached. I waited patiently at the counter. I didn’t dare say anything, in case the shock of having a customer in this part of the canteen killed her stone dead.

      After almost a minute, when she still showed no sign of turning in my direction, I gave a low, gentle cough.

      That seemed to do the trick. With her two-sizes-too-small nylon uniform almost bursting at the seams, she at last shuffled round to look at me. Well, not exactly look. As she turned, I could see she was holding a chipped and dirty plate in front of her, completely hiding her face.

      ‘Um…hi,’ I began, assuming she’d move the plate when I started speaking. ‘Have you got anything that’s quite healthy, but not too healthy?’ The plate didn’t move. Maybe this was what being stuck on the healthy-eating counter all day did to you.

      ‘Like, do you do low-fat hot dogs or something? Or veggie burgers, but with, like, a little bit of meat in them?’

      She just stood there, not responding, the plate not moving. I glanced across at the rest of the canteen. Everyone was going about their own business – ordering lunches, scoffing food, stuffing chips up smaller kids’ noses. No one was paying me or Plate Face the slightest bit of attention.

      ‘Er…hello?’ I tried. ‘Can you hear me?’

      A low breath escaped her lips, like the ominous rumblings of a once dormant volcano. Slowly, she leaned her head a little to the right, as she tilted the plate slightly to the left. A single eye peered at me from around the cracked crockery’s edge.

      ‘Peek-a-boo,’ she whispered. ‘I seeeee you.’

      The plate slipped from her fingers. A roar of delight went up from the kids in the canteen as the crockery shattered loudly on the patterned linoleum floor.

      ‘Nice work killing the dinner lady,’ grinned Billy, punctuating the sentence by punching me hard on the arm.

      ‘I didn’t kill her,’ I told him, pulling my schoolbag higher up on to my shoulder and quickening my pace along the science corridor. ‘She fainted.’

      She had fainted. The second the plate had shattered on the ground, she’d kind of slumped down, like a puppet whose strings had all snapped. Complete pandemonium had followed, with the teachers all trying to help her up, and the pupils all falling over each other to take photos on their mobiles.

      Most of the kids had been laughing, or chattering excitedly. Not me. There was something unsettling about the way the dinner lady had behaved. And what she’d said to me – she’d spoken the same words as Hector the postman had spoken this morning. Something was happening, I knew, but what that something was I had no idea.

      Two of Billy’s friends rushed up to join him, and all thoughts of the dinner lady and the postie melted away. The three boys surrounded me – a minion on each side, Billy walking backwards in front of me.

      ‘Must’ve been your way with women,’ one of the lackeys snickered.

      ‘Or his smell,’ Billy suggested. All three of them laughed at that. I wanted to tell Billy I couldn’t possibly stink as badly as he did, but on the other hand I also wanted to live to see my next birthday.

      Around us, other kids hurried СКАЧАТЬ