Heartache High (2 page)

No signs. No
directions.

Down; that’s
where a hotel’s breakfast room usually is.

At the bottom of
the stairs, either side opens up onto corridors similar to the one
I’ve left behind upstairs; long, straight, lots of doors leading
off. Every door the same, like it’s all nothing but more
bedrooms.

Wow, just how
big is Hotel Dreary?

How many people
do they expect to stay in a place like this?

There is another
door, however; one leading to the outside.

In the
circumstances, that seems my best bet.

I step outside,
breathe in the fresh air like I’m clearing my lungs of all the
dreariness I’ve been inhaling over the past few minutes.

Moving a little
away from the building I’ve just come out of, and looking back up
at it, I can see that it’s of a similar style to the building
facing it, only plainer, less decorative and elaborate.

A dormitory,
that’s what it reminds me of; a university’s student
dormitory.

I look back at
the building standing across from me on the other side of the
lawns.

No, not a
university – a boarding school.

A school with
only one student – me.

*

So, if this
is
a school, where’s mum and dad got to?

Where, for that
matter, are all the other students?

I wander across
the lawns, heading towards what I take is the main block of
schoolrooms.

There are other
buildings spreading out either side of me, like it’s a large
complex.

Could be the
students – if this
is
a school, of course – are in any of
these other buildings. Could be the dormitory’s empty because we’re
all supposed to be in class.

I check my
wristwatch to see what time it is.

No
watch.

Still, you’d
think there would be somebody other than me wandering around
between classes.

And I’ve still
got to figure out
why
and
how
I happen to be
here.

What, exactly,
was I doing before I woke up here?

Dreaming of
Iain.

Nothing unusual
in that

And sure, as
it’s my dreams rather than reality, he totally responded to what I
consider are my considerable charms rather than completely ignoring
them.

Nothing unusual
there either.

But obviously,
it’s not my dreams I should be focusing on; it’s whatever happened
before I ended up in that ridiculously small bed.

Know what? There
I draw a complete blank.

Last thing I can
remember is talking to Cherry and Mary at school. Letting our
imaginations and envy run wild as we tried to work out how Yvonne
Gresham had managed to land a date with Darren Claudes.

Normally, I try
and keep a wide berth between myself and Iain, seeing as how just a
glimpse of him at school is enough to transform me into whatever
the female version of the Marx Brothers would be.

At one and the
same time, it’s both a blissful and an agonising
experience.

I get all
excited just hearing his name (making any excuse I can to bring him
up in conversation, which is getting a bit irritating even for
Cherry and Mary) let alone seeing him hanging around close
by.

The agony comes
from the way he’s always surrounded by giggling girls, none of whom
fall around in his presence like I tend to do.

Today, Iain
comes nonchalantly sailing past Cherry, Mary and me, carrying a
pile of books like he’s on an errand for someone.

No giggling
harem of girls in attendance.

No friends
even.

My ears and
brain immediately switch off whatever Cherry and Mary’s
saying.

My eyes swivel
painfully in their sockets as I try and watch Iain pass without
noticeably turning my head.

My smile remains
fixed, in the hope that my friends don’t notice they’ve no longer
got my attention. (Yeah, some hope!)

When Iain
finally passes out of view of eyeballs straining to see out of the
side of my face, I’ve got no choice – I have to come up with some
pathetic excuse to turn around.

Suddenly, I’m
batting away at some non-existent fly that’s obviously irritating
me so much I have to spin around just a little bit to try and get
away from it.

(Yeah, okay, so
it really
is
an unbelievably lame excuse; but I used up all
the more believable ones
long
ago!)

Fortunately,
Iain doesn’t seem to notice how pathetically I’m acting.

Unfortunately,
that’s because he isn’t noticing me at all. As per
usual.

He’s just
striding past me like I’m every bit as invisible as the kids at
this school.

And this is
where things get a bit odd, because I can’t honestly recall what
happened next.

Sure, I know
what
probably
happened, what
always
happens; Iain
kept on his merry way, heading off somewhere else where he’ll end
up having lots of fun with his friends and the ever-attendant
gaggle of excited girls.

That’s the rest
of my day ruined.

I can’t help but
spend the next few hours trying to work out exactly where he’s
headed off to, who he might be meeting up with, which girl might be
cunningly persuading him to take her out on a date.

Torture,
yeah?

Then, later,
when I’ve worked out nothing but the fact that I’m never going to
figure it out, I retreat into a corner of my mind where I can
wallow in my misery, or rant away at nobody but myself about how
unfair life is.

School work
ignored.

Friends
ignored.

Yeah, that’s
undoubtedly the way it all panned out, going by my recent history
of being one of life’s failures.

But I don’t know
for sure, see? Because, weirdly, that’s where my dream sort of
seems to take over, blending reality with the sort of scenario I’ve
wished for so many times.

Where Iain
stops; rather than passing by.

Where he turns,
notices me; rather than somehow managing to look straight through
me, like I wasn’t there.

Where I’m
looking amazing; rather than falling over my feet, or sporting a
massive spot on my nose.

Where his mouth
almost hangs open in surprise at seeing this vision of loveliness,
this Venus, who for some-unfathomably-crazy-reason he’s never
noticed before.

Where he smiles,
grins stupidly, just a little nervous about approaching someone so
indescribably beautiful.

But that’s okay,
because I smile back, letting him know it’s fine for him to come
closer.

So he
does.

He gives me one
of his grins that somehow seem to say, Hey, you don’t know what fun
is until you’ve hung around with me.

He walks over to
me.

He says, ‘Hi,
you might not know me, but…’

And
that’s
when I wake up in a bed made for the world’s thinnest
person.

*

So, is
that
it?

Am I
still
in a dream?

Still not woken
up yet?

I pinch
myself.

Ouch!

Yeah, like
that’s
going to work, right?

If I’m in a
dream, I’ve just pinched myself in my dream, haven’t I?

The doorway to
the main building is huge, a line of identical doors surrounded by
a beautifully ornate porch.

The school’s
name is neatly carved into the stone above the porch
entrance.

Heartache High.

I mean, what
school calls itself
that
?

Yeah, it’s
g
o
t
to be a dream, right?

*

Inside, I at
last begin to see things I’m more familiar with.

Corridors with
doors that open onto classrooms.

There’s even a
room that could be some sort of laboratory.

I say
could
be because, all though it’s clean and well kept, it
looks ancient.

Like it’s still
being used to discover how the wheel works.

The classrooms,
too, look like they’re from another age. One when kids sat behind
rows of small wooden desks, and did exactly what teacher told them
to do, including keeping deathly quiet as they scribbled down their
times-tables.

Do I need to say
that I still haven’t seen anyone yet?

Still, in the
laboratory, the desktop opposite each seat is cluttered with what
looks like equipment for an experiment.

There are a
number of paper and even carved Mobius strips (you know, where you
twist a strip of paper then tape the ends, so you end up with an
object that’s only got one side).

On a few of the
desktops, some people have even tried to work out how a three
dimensional version would work.

It all adds to
the unnerving Mary Celeste atmosphere, only here it’s the
experiments everyone’s suddenly left half-finished rather than
their meals.

One wall is
dominated by huge chalkboards on which a number of supposedly
helpful diagrams have been drawn. Beyond how the basic strip works,
however, the figures and angled lines and curves remain a mystery
to me.

Now
that’s
really really really odd!

One of the
desktop experiments seems to have changed while I had my back to
it.

I could have
sworn the three, different-sized carved strips had been separate.
But now they’ve been joined to almost form a hemisphere.

I whirl around,
glancing nervously at the other experiments.

There’s no
movement, but each one seems to have progressed slightly from how I
can remember first seeing it.

And one of the
diagrams on the chalkboard has been carelessly wiped, leaving a
smudge of coloured chalk.

Uh oh – what is
this?

A school for
ghosts
?

*

Have I
died?

Did Iain come
over to me, smiling (inanely?), because he’d noticed me after all,
regarding me much the same way as a pop star sees a crazed fan as a
stalker?

Had he had
enough, strangling me in front of a quite frankly shocked Cherry
and Mary?

Suddenly, the
rooms full of excited whispering.

No, not
whispering; just the sound of a classroom, but so heavily muted I
can barely hear it.

But it’s getting
louder.

Around me, there
are blurs of movement in the air,

Blurs that, as
the sound of chatter increases, become wraith-like figures, moving
from desk to desk.

Ghosts.

The ghosts of
the kids who used to attend this school.

One of the
figures stares back at me curiously.

‘Oh, hi,’ he
says, offering me his hand to shake. ‘You’re new here aren’t
you?’

*

‘Am I dead?’ I
ask blankly.

In a daze, I
accept his hand.

It’s much firmer
than I expected; like a real hand.

Thing is, he no
longer looks ghost-like either.

He looks just
like a normal kid.

He’s even got
the mussed up hair, the geeky glasses.

‘Dead?’

He grins, like
this is the most amusing thing he’s ever heard, some girl asking
him if she’s dead.

He nudges the
girl sitting next to him with a gentle jab of his elbow.

‘She thinks
she’s dead.’

The girl looks
up at me, her face broadening into a friendly smile like she’s only
just noticed me.

‘Oh, hello! I’m
Jassy!

Like the other
ghost, she offers me her hand. I shake it.

‘Steph,’ I say
dazedly, keeping it sounding like I run through polite
introductions with ghosts every day. ‘Stephanie
Johnson.’

‘I’m Dave,’ the
boy says.

‘Quite a lot of
people who turn up here think they’re dead.’

Jassy’s still
got her broad smile as she says this, but now it’s more a pitying
grin.

‘So…am I dead or
not?’

They shake their
heads.

‘We don’t think
so.’

‘Don’t
think
so? You mean you don’t know?’