Secrets at Silver Spires (3 page)

“That's the one!” said Georgie.

“Yes, it sounds like what I've got!” I admitted, which made everyone laugh. Katy went over to the bin and pulled out my crumpled sunset. “Look, Naomi,” she said. “It's good, isn't it?”

Naomi looked for ages, then nodded slowly. “Reminds me of Ghana. I've seen lots of sunsets like that,” she said quietly, and I wondered whether she was feeling a bit homesick, because I knew she'd spent the Easter holidays in Ghana, where she comes from. She sometimes works for a water aid charity there and has told us about the awful disease and death amongst the very poor people. She says she feels guilty when she compares the lives of people in northern Ghana with her own life here in England.

After we'd all got into bed and Miss Jennings had been in to tell us to put our lights out, we talked in whispers in the dark. Sometimes we're completely quiet after lights out, but on this night my sunset seemed to have got Grace thinking.

“Isn't it amazing that it's the same sun that shines on every country in the world?” she said, sounding a bit sad.

So then I started to feel sorry for her, too, because she'd just spent the Easter holidays in Thailand and I knew she'd be missing her family right now.

“Are you thinking of painting a sunset for the art exhibition, Jess?” she went on.

“No…I don't think so…”

Georgie seemed to sigh as she turned over and I thought I ought to stop talking so she could get to sleep.

“Sorry, Georgie.” I snuggled further under the duvet and wrapped myself in cosy thoughts about the art exhibition and all that Mr. Cary had told us about it in the last lesson. You're allowed to enter absolutely any type of art, but every entry has to be accompanied by a card which says a bit about it. That's the only part I'm not looking forward to, because of my terrible spelling. At least it's only a sentence or two, though, and Grace will tell me how to spell the longer words, so it shouldn't be too bad. But that still wasn't a very nice thought to take with me to sleep, so I focused on the prizes instead. There are three prizes for the junior part of the school, which is Years Seven, Eight and Nine, and three for the senior part, Years Ten and Eleven. Six prizes altogether.

And then I thought about the most exciting thing of all to do with the exhibition. Mr. Cary had told us that the famous artist, Brian Hodgson, would be coming to judge the art, and I was in seventh heaven about that. I'd seen his work at Tate Modern and I really loved it. It would be amazing if I won a prize, but nothing mattered so much as seeing Brian Hodgson, right here, at Silver Spires.

The next day, during morning break, Georgie dragged us round all the places where building was going on in the school, in search of the builder she called “concrete boy”. We never did find him, but I wasn't even looking. My whole attention was on the trees and the grass and the different materials being used on the building sites. My idea for the art exhibition was beginning to come into focus. I definitely wanted to create a piece of installation art and I was starting to wonder whether I might be able to use some of the leftover wood or metal from here.

At Tate Modern there are some brilliant installations. I've been there three times now – once with my parents when I was nine, once on a school trip, and once last summer with Mum and Dad and my brother, Ben, who's four years older than me and lives and breathes chess. I was the one who'd begged to go to Tate Modern and Ben had rolled his eyes and said he'd only come if we could do something that wasn't so boring afterwards. Mum and Dad had quickly agreed, because neither of them likes modern art either.

“Look at that,” I remember Mum saying to Dad, in a bit of a disgusted voice, in front of one of the exhibits. She'd shaken her head in disbelief. “A room full of junk with a metal tree in the middle! What's that about?”

Dad had rolled his eyes. “How can anyone call that art?”

I'd tried to explain that the artist might have cared like mad about nature, and thought the world was being ruined with all its non-biodegradable rubbish.

“Perhaps he's put that metal tree there to make the point that as long as trees are shaped like trees, people won't notice or care if they're made of metal.”

“Well if he feels that strongly about it he should write to newspapers and things, not make all this rubbish!” Ben had sneered.

And Mum and Dad had just frowned and said it was an interesting idea of mine.

“But is it really art,” Dad had added, “if you have to explain it to people?”

So then I'd got into an argument with them about how art isn't anything definite, it's whatever you see in it, and that there aren't any rights and wrongs with art. And Dad said he was sorry but he thought that was airy-fairy rubbish.

I'd been furious with my family for the rest of the day, but since then I've talked all about it with Mr. Cary, and he's made me realize that there's no point in trying to get people to see what I see myself. I should just be glad that I've been born with an artist's eye.

Thinking now about that tree in the Tate Modern exhibition made me wonder whether I could create figures of people out of metal… I could feel that the idea I'd got at the back of my mind was struggling to come forwards, but it wasn't there yet, and as the others headed towards the main building, I fell behind, pictures of metal installation people filling my head. It wasn't till Grace stopped to wait for me and said, “See you after English, Jess,” that I came back to earth with a horrible bump, and the light that had been glowing inside me went out.

I'm in a lower set than the others for English, maths and science. I usually like to sit about halfway back in lessons. I think that's the best place for having the least chance of being picked on to answer questions. I was in between two girls called Isis and Lily today, but they were both talking to the people on either side of them, while I felt myself shrinking in the middle as I watched Mr. Reeves, the teacher, with a growing feeling of nervousness. He had a pile of official-looking booklets on his desk, and was slotting a piece of blank paper into each. Around me, the class chattered on.

They didn't even stop when Mr. Reeves started walking round, giving out the booklets. But then gradually the dreaded word “test” started spitting out of the chatter, like fat from a frying pan.

“Yes,” said Mr. Reeves, as he returned to his desk. “Quite right. You're having a test today.”

I gulped and lifted the booklet up to feel how thick it was. Then I wished I hadn't, because it was several pages and I knew that would be impossible for me to get through in one lesson.

“Now the reason for the test,” went on Mr. Reeves, “is purely and simply because we want to find out about your reading levels.” My heartbeat doubled. “You've got precisely thirty minutes and I think most of you will find that's quite enough…” I was sure his eyes flicked in my direction on the words “
most
of you”, but maybe that was because he'd seen me looking petrified at the thought of only having thirty minutes, not even the whole lesson. “You'll find when you start reading the booklet that it's like a comprehension test, with certain things to underline in the text and other things to write down on the sheet of paper. The instructions are perfectly clear.”

Yes, if you can read them.
My spirits slid down to the floor.

Mr. Reeves looked at his watch, then glanced up sharply to remind us in a no-nonsense voice that we must, of course, work in silence. “Right, in a moment you will be starting the test and I shall tell you when there are ten minutes left to go, and then five minutes, and finally one.” There was a dramatic pause. “You may now begin.”

My heart hammered as I opened the booklet and looked at all the words and words and more words inside. Was it a story? It didn't have a title. I ran my finger very slowly under the first few words.

Read the flowing passage…

The flowing passage? Something about a stream or a river flowing along?

…then a swear the questions.

Questions.
I could read that word easily as I've seen it so often, but what had that got to do with swearing or a river?

I went back to the beginning and broke down each word carefully, which was when I realized it wasn't
the flowing passage
, it was
the following passage
. Right, so I had to read the passage, then do something about swearing the questions. That couldn't be right. I made myself keep calm and sound out every letter. I still couldn't manage the one that looked like
swear
, but I kicked myself when I realized it was obviously
answer
, because of the last word being
questions
. Right, so all I had to do was read the passage and answer the questions.

Go, Jess.

First I looked for capital letters so I could find out who the characters were. There was T, A and B. The B turned out to be Birmingham, which took me a while, and the T was for Tom and the A for Alex. So then I went back to the beginning and tried to decode the words one at a time, but the first sentence was so long that by the time I'd got to the end of it I couldn't remember what it said at the beginning. Perhaps it would be better to just keep reading until something made sense.

So I slowly worked out every single word on the first double page, but I still had no idea what the story was about because of having to concentrate so hard on the individual words. I think it was saying that Tom and Alex had come across a homeless person on a bench, but that might not have been it at all. Then there was a long description of clothes, but I was a bit confused about whether the clothes had been in the shop nearby or if Tom and Alex had gone to get clothes for the tramp from their home.

My mind was flooded with pictures, but then a scratching sound beside me made its way into my little world of images, and when I turned to see what it was I realized that Isis was scribbling away. She wasn't resting the sheet of paper on anything but the desk, so the ballpoint pen made quite a noise. I nearly jumped a mile when Mr. Reeves's deep voice suddenly announced that we had ten minutes to go, because I hadn't written a single word or even finished reading the passage.

I decided the best thing to do was look at the questions and get on with answering the first ones, because they were sure to be based on the first part of the passage, which I'd managed to read. Even though I wasn't at all sure what was going on in the story, I might be able to guess some of the answers. My hands were shaking as I held the booklet up a bit closer and worked my way through the first question.

Underline three words in the first paragraph that suggest that the weather in Birmingham made the atmosphere uncomfortable.

It had taken me so long to read to the end of that sentence that I'd had to go back to the beginning to remind myself whether I was supposed to underline the three words or circle them. But at least it didn't take long to find
muggy
,
dusty
and
heavy
in the passage, because I knew what I was looking for. Those words had stayed in my head as soon as I'd been able to picture the scene.

The next few questions asked you to underline more words from the text, but I wasn't so sure I'd got those ones right. And then there was a question asking us to explain how Alex's thoughts and feelings about the tramp gradually changed. Just as I understood what I had to do, Mr. Reeves announced that there were five minutes to go, so then I went into a blind panic because I hadn't written anything on the paper, and I felt so ashamed of myself.

I thought I knew how Alex felt the first time she saw the tramp because I'd pictured her walking past on the other side of the road, tutting at Tom for stopping and actually talking to the tramp. But I had no idea how her feelings gradually changed. Maybe I hadn't read that far. I spent about thirty seconds trying to find the right bit, but at the sight of Isis leaning back in her chair, looking round in a rather bored way to show she'd finished, I decided to simply make up an answer. At least the first half of it would be right.

“One minute to go,” came Mr. Reeves's booming voice as I was finishing my answer. I'd written something about Alex deciding to give the tramp some clothes from her own wardrobe, only I'd stumbled over spelling
wardrobe
because it didn't look right with the two rs so close together, so in the end I crossed it out and wrote that she'd got the clothes from home.

“Right, stop working now, please.” My hands were still shaking when Mr. Reeves came round to collect in the booklets and papers, and I didn't feel any calmer when we were then asked to get into groups ready for some role-play work based on the passage we'd just read.

Isis, Sophie, Lily and I formed a group together and my heart plummeted when Sophie said she wanted to play Alex because she liked the way he came to understand the tramp's situation.