Cherry Blossom Dreams (15 page)

‘Thanks.’

Just then Sean walked in through the door behind Zack. He immediately pointed at my pink hair and fell about laughing.

‘Shut up,’ I snapped, though of course that wasn’t going to stop him.

‘At least there’s not as much noise outside as I thought there’d be,’ Sean said once he’d pulled himself together. ‘You can’t hear much at all from the street.’

‘Told you it would be fine,’ I snapped.

‘Well, I don’t know about fine!’ He paused. ‘You do realise Raffy’s got
you
taking all the risk for a party that’s full of
his
friends, don’t you?’

‘So?’

‘Sasha, are you in here?’ Lily came to the door of the kitchen and looked relieved when she found me.

‘What is it, Lily?’

‘Someone just told me that a crowd of Year Tens are mucking about in that old shed in the garden. Should we go and check it out, do you think? I can get Raffy to come with us.’

‘If he’s not
one
of them,’ Sean muttered.

‘It’s OK, Lily, we’ll go and check it out,’ I told her, going over to the open back door where, when I looked out, I could make out movement at the end of the garden.

It was getting dark outside as Sean, Zack and I made our way across the grass and through the trees until we reached the spot where the trees ended and the wild part of the garden began. I stopped abruptly because I really didn’t want to ruin my dress by carrying on through all the overgrown grass and brambles.

A friend of Raffy’s called Jake and a few other Year Ten boys were gathered in front of the shed, standing round the big metal trunk, which they must have dragged outside. The box was open and they were shining their torches inside it, talking in low excited voices.

As I stared at them I realised some of them had obviously been drinking. What if we couldn’t get them to leave at eleven thirty? I recognised Dylan Gibbs and Rajan Singh, who are both massive and play on the Helensfield High rugby team. Sean and Zack and I would be no match for them. Even Raffy wouldn’t be able to force them to leave if they didn’t want to.

‘Hey, what are you doing with that?’ Sean demanded as he approached them, seemingly completely oblivious to the need for caution.

All of the boys turned and pointed their torches at him.

‘Hate to break this to you, guys, but those are torches, not guns!’ my brother quipped.

There was a moment of silence before Dylan stepped forward and grabbed my brother roughly by the arm. ‘Sean! Come and check this out, you idiot!’

Clearly Dylan and my brother knew each other pretty well and once again I found myself grudgingly admiring Sean’s easy popularity. Soon Sean had all the older boys listening to him as he recounted how the man who used to live here had been a magician and how we thought the trunk had probably been his.

‘Hey, I saw something on TV the other day about this magician called Houdini who was an amazing escape artist,’ Jake piped up. ‘This guy could escape from trunks like this that had padlocks on them and chains round them and everything!’

That’s when Sean boasted, ‘I bet
I
could do that too! My grandfather was a magician, you know. I reckon that kind of talent runs in families.’

Everybody groaned. ‘Yeah … right, Sean.’

‘If you want a go I think I’ve got a padlock on my bike that would fit this box!’ Dylan teased.

‘Sure! I bet I can escape from there in less than three minutes!’ Sean declared, urging Dylan to go and fetch it.

‘Sean, don’t be stupid!’ I snapped as Dylan went off.

‘It’s OK, Sasha.’ Sean came over to me and whispered, ‘A good kick from the inside and those rusty hinges will come right off. I can’t wait to see their faces when I spring out of there!’

‘But, Sean …’ I trailed off. It was true that those hinges were so rusted through that one kick probably
would
be enough to break them off. But still …

Sean was already stepping into the trunk.

‘Sean sure likes to show off, doesn’t he?’ Zack murmured as Rafferty appeared outside, along with Lily and several other people who had heard that something was going on in the garden.

‘He likes to entertain people,’ I murmured with a resigned sigh. Suddenly it struck me that clearly Sean
had
inherited something from our magician grandfather.

Sean lay down on his back inside the metal box, his knees drawn up in front of him, telling the others to go ahead and shut him in. I looked across at Raffy and noticed that a Year Ten girl called Sophie was leaning against him. As they stood there together, he stretched out his arm and curled it round her shoulder. I looked away really quickly, trying not to think about what I’d seen.

Dylan soon came back with the padlock and showed us that he had the key hanging safely on a chain round his neck. Then everyone went silent as the lid of the box went down and the padlock was clicked in place.

‘GO!’ yelled Rajan, who was timing it.

I sneaked a glance over at Raffy again. Sophie was snuggling up to him like she was his girlfriend. My heart was pounding and I just wanted to run away somewhere and hide. How could I ever have imagined myself as more than sensible Sasha, his kid sister’s dorky best friend?

A steady thumping started up from inside the box as my brother began to kick repeatedly against the lid. Not very Houdini-like, I thought. A whole minute passed, then a second minute. The hinges on the trunk still held. In the rapidly fading light Lily got out her phone and shone the torch on the box as Sean kicked over and over again in the same spot. He was kicking so hard that we could actually see the metal lid getting dented.

After another minute the banging stopped and we heard Sean call out, ‘If you guys are sitting on the lid, can you get off, please?’

‘No one’s sitting on the lid, Sean,’ Rajan shouted back.

‘Have you had enough? Shall we unlock it for you?’ yelled Dylan.

There was a brief silence and then the kicking started up again. I couldn’t understand how the hinges were still holding.

After a while Sean stopped again and sounded a bit breathless as he said, ‘OK, I give in. Let me out, will you?’

‘Not until we hear a
please
!’ joked someone.

‘Please,’ Sean said, in a way that made me think he had definitely had enough.

Raffy came forward to help (Sophie had melted into the crowd) and we all watched as the padlock was removed. I was more than ready to start teasing my brother along with everybody else the second the lid came up. But then it became clear that that wasn’t going to happen. Somehow the lid seemed to have got jammed.

‘I can’t shift it,’ Dylan murmured, standing back to let someone else have a go.

‘Guys, can you please hurry up?’ came Sean’s muffled voice from inside. He sounded a bit panicky as he added, ‘It’s hot in here and I could really use some air.’

‘We’re trying, Sean,’ Raffy called out as he attempted in vain to budge the lid himself. ‘The latch is jammed or something.’

And the worst thing of all was that Raffy actually sounded worried.

‘Sasha, do you know if there are any tools here?’ Raffy suddenly asked as I tried not to think about my brother being trapped inside that sealed metal box with no air holes.

‘There are some under the stairs.’

‘Can you go and get them?’

Zack came with me to fetch the tools from the house and we rushed back out to the garden with them, just as we heard Lily’s voice yelling out, ‘Hurry up! He’s really starting to panic.’

Everybody stood back as I tipped the contents of the bag on to the ground and Raffy picked up a big sturdy screwdriver.

‘Don’t worry, Sean,’ I called out to him. ‘Raffy’s going to unjam the latch.’

But it didn’t turn out to be that easy as everyone with a torch on his or her phone, shone it on to the box to give Raffy as much light as possible to work by.

‘Sasha, I think it’s time we phoned for help,’ Zack said when five minutes had passed and Raffy still hadn’t managed to get into the trunk.

‘OK, but who?’

‘The fire brigade maybe?’

‘OK.’ I was fighting down panic as I fumbled to get my phone out of my pocket, unable to stop my hands from shaking.

That’s when we heard someone yelling at us from the direction of the house: ‘WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?’

‘Isn’t that
Mr Anderson
?’ I heard someone say as I looked up to see Leo making his way across the garden towards us.

‘It
is
Mr Anderson!’ someone confirmed, and suddenly Sean’s predicament was temporarily forgotten as almost everybody scrambled to escape, horrified at the prospect of being caught here by a teacher.

‘Sasha, is that
you
?’ Leo was striding towards us through the trees and fleeing kids, sounding like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He put up his arm to shield his eyes as a couple of people who had stayed to help shone their torches right in his face.

‘Leo!’ I called out, hugely relieved, and if anyone was surprised to hear me calling our teacher by his first name, then they didn’t comment. ‘Sean is trapped inside that box. It isn’t locked but we can’t get the lid off. It’s like the latch has jammed or something.’

As if on cue Sean started yelling and banging hysterically on the lid.

‘How long has he been in there?’ Leo asked us tensely as he squatted down to inspect the latch for himself.

We told him and if anything he seemed relieved that it hadn’t been longer.

‘SEAN! IT’S LEO!’ he shouted to get my brother’s attention.

‘Listen, we’re going to get you out of there! But I need you to stop panicking and take some nice slow breaths. OK?’

‘OK.’ Sean’s voice was hoarse but he did sound slightly calmer.

‘Good boy. Now cover your ears. The next part is going to be noisy.’

It was all a bit of a blur after that.

After several more minutes of trying unsuccessfully to break off either the latch or the hinges Leo stopped and took Lily’s torch from her, shining it on to the lid just above the latch. ‘Did Sean make that dent there, do you think?’ he asked as he peered at the metal more closely.

‘I think so,’ I said. ‘He was kicking at it really hard.’

Leo frowned. ‘I think maybe the top part of the latch has shifted out of alignment with the bottom part and that’s what’s caused it to jam. I’m going to try and straighten out this dent and see if that makes a difference.’

We watched as he carefully bashed at the dented part of the lid, then applied the screwdriver to the latch again. This time, after a bit of careful jiggling and a bit of brute force the two parts separated. As the lid came up, everyone cheered.

I rushed over to the box. ‘Sean, are you OK?’

I could see straight away that he wasn’t. His face was red and tear-streaked and his hair, damp with sweat, was standing on end. His body was trembling all over and it was clear that he was still in panic mode.

‘Just take it easy, Sean. Stand up slowly,’ Leo cautioned, but Sean wasn’t listening. He was almost hysterical in his panic to get out of the box and he batted Leo’s outstretched hand away and jumped out, only to have his knees buckle under him as soon as his feet touched the ground.

Leo caught him just before he fell and my brother didn’t put up any resistance as Leo scooped him up and carried him into the house.

Most of the Year Tens had gone by the time we all got back inside. The few stragglers went without a fuss as soon as they realised Leo was there. Lily, Rafferty, Ellie and Zack all stayed behind after everyone else had left. When Leo saw them still hovering he told them to phone their parents and get themselves lifts home. Meanwhile, he sent me to go and wait with Sean while he did a sweep of the house and garden to check nobody else was still there.

I found my brother lying on the sofa in the front room, where Leo had taken him to calm down. He was still looking pretty shaken up. I was so grateful he was safe that a big part of me just wanted to run over and give him a massive hug.

‘Ow!’ Sean cried out when I marched over and whacked him really hard on the shoulder instead. ‘What was
that
for?’

‘Zack’s right! You
do
just like showing off. I thought you were going to suffocate in there …’ I didn’t bother trying to explain how scared I’d been or how helpless I’d felt. I think I’d have started crying if I’d said any more right then.

Sean obviously got the message because, for once, he didn’t try and joke his way out of it.

We were sitting quietly side by side on the sofa when Leo came back into the room. We’d heard him handing our friends over to their parents and we knew we weren’t the only ones in big trouble.

‘Where’s Mum?’ I asked him in a small voice.

‘At home.’

Sean said nervously, ‘We thought you guys weren’t coming back until tomorrow.’

‘No kidding?’ Leo glared at him before explaining, ‘We decided we may as well get the last train back tonight, and on the way your mum got a call from Miranda asking her to check that everything was OK at Blossom House. One of the neighbours had phoned saying he thought he’d heard some kids in the garden. Your mum was exhausted when we got back though, so I took her home and said I’d check it out.’ He shook his head at us. ‘Have you seen your face, Sasha? Go and wash off that make-up. And you’d better hope that pink stuff comes out of your hair.’ He turned to Sean, the tension in his voice going up a notch. ‘As for
you
… what the hell were you thinking just now?’