Silent Treatment (2 page)

The day she thought she had lost her locker key, she had returned to the changing room after her dance lesson, put her feet back in her shoes
and then immediately wrenched them back out as her toes had dug into squished bits of jam doughnut. A few days before that someone with a great aim, had lobbed an enormous blob of freshly chewed chewing gum into her newly styled hair as she walked along a crowded corridor.

She gave up feeling sorry for herself and dropped her bag on the floor. She picked out the other ruined books, making a half-hearted attempt at shifting the sticky goo, then she stopped as she heard more footsteps echoing along the corridor. She glanced out from behind the locker door hoping it wasn’t the headmaster coming to give her a dressing down too.

She breathed in deeply and rolled her eyes in horror as she saw who was striding towards her.

Great! As if her day could get any worse!

Daniel Lewis, the year thirteen heart throb was staring right at her, his sapphire blue eyes ice li
ke in their scrutiny. She closed her own eyes briefly and buried her head back in the locker.

Why
couldn’t she be looking cool and fabulous? Why did she have to have to have pink goo dripping from everywhere?

At six feet six inches, Daniel was a giant. Taller than all the teachers, master of all sports and Captain of the school rugby team. Massive across the shoulders and slim at the waist, he was utterly gorgeous to look at. His dark h
air, still damp from the shower, was clinging to his forehead after the latest rugby match and Carrie’s heart fluttered madly as he approached her.

She
was in love with him of course. All the girls were, and who could blame them with such a perfect specimen of eighteen-year-old manhood draped before their eyes every day, but Carrie didn’t hold out any hopes. She knew she was a long way down the pecking order. She just wasn’t in the “in crowd” enough to be considered worthy of being asked out by the likes of the, beyond gorgeous, Daniel Lewis.

Not that he had a girlfriend that she knew of. All
of his spare time was taken up on the sports field, and even if he did attract a crowd of adoring female fans at every event he took part in, he didn’t seem that impressed by any of them.

“What’s going on Carrie?” His voice, soft but deep, wafted over her as he leaned past her shoulder and peered into the offending locker.  His blue eyes widened as he surveyed the damage. “Don’t let Evans see this mess.
He’ll go mad. You know what he’s like for giving out detentions. He loves it.” Daniel stepped back quickly, avoiding the livid pink tendrils as Carrie shook out another book. She wiped the strands of silly string with her fingers, but they clung tenaciously to the cover of the file. She gave the book a last desperate shake.

“It’s too late,
he’s already given me one for Thursday and I think he’s going to say something to the head too. Silly string is apparently banned. He said I could be suspended.” Carrie sighed miserably as she slid the bedraggled book into her bag.

Daniel
looked momentarily shocked and then he threw his head back and laughed loudly. It was a lovely sound, deep and husky.

“You twit!
He’s only saying that because a group of year nines ambushed him with the stuff in charity week. He was covered from head to foot. I don’t think a foamed locker is going to get you suspended Carrie. Here, I’ll give you a hand.” He leaned over her, dwarfing her slender frame. 

Carrie
couldn’t help herself. She breathed in deeply as she smelled the wonderful aftershave he always splashed on after his rugby sessions, wafting from his warm body. Daniel stooped and pulled a damp towel out of his kit bag. He began wiping the inside of the locker. The foam smeared around the grey interior.

Carrie sighed as the mess spread even further, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was making it worse. She put her hand on his huge forearm.

“Thanks, but you don’t have to do that Dan. You’re going to ruin your towel and make yourself late home.” She smiled gently up at him as she remembered how he had manfully helped her with the doughnut shoes too.

He had hooked his long finger
around the jammy mess of one she while she had cleaned out the other, as she had hopped along in bare feet to her next class. He had been there to oversee the cutting of her hair when the chewing gum had done its work too.

He had
given complicated instructions as he made one of the girls layer her hair above the offending grey blob instead of chopping it through straight. His coming to her aid was getting to be a bit of a habit.

Although Carrie was two years younger than Dan
iel, she didn’t feel as overawed by him as some of the girls in school. She got on really well with him. He lived at the end of her street and they had known each other for years.

But i
t was only in the last six months that she had finally realized that she was in love with him. She kicked herself mentally for not knowing what the strange skipping sensation in her heart had meant, every time she had seen him since she was about six years old.

It was hopeless of course. She knew that h
e only thought of her as a neighbour, the little girl from down the street, but she liked the fact that most days he waited for her at the end of the road so that he could walk to school with her. It didn’t mean anything, she knew that, it was just that he’d always done it, even right back as far as primary school.

Dan
iel turned his head slightly and laughed grimly at her as he began scooping up more of the gloopy foam.

“Don’t worry about it. This is
only my old rugby towel. It gets a lot worse on it than this stuff, and I won’t be missing much at home. I think I’d rather stay here and help you clear up this lot.”

Carrie looked at him quizzically not
sure whether he wanted her to ask why he wasn’t particularly keen on going home but curiosity got the better of her.

“Why?
It’s not like it’s fun,” she asked after a few seconds silence.

Dan
iel pulled a big dollop of foam out of the locker and looked around for somewhere to put it. Carrie pulled an old plastic sandwich bag from her pocket and he shook the foam inside.

He stood pulling bits of foam from his fingers
for a few seconds before he glanced down at her, his blue eyes startlingly intense as his dark eyebrows descended into a straight line over them.

“It’s not good at home at the moment. My parents aren’t getting on
at all. It has been bad for a while now. I think they’d get divorced if they could actually afford to split up. As it is they just spend the whole time arguing about who should live where and how much money they both need. It’s awful. I’d rather stay here.”

Carrie
balled up the lunch bag and tipped the rest of the books into her duffel. She’d clean off any remaining foam when she arrived home.

“Oh, Dan that’s terrible! What are
you going to do if they split up? I mean, this is your last year here. I thought you wanted to go away to university, will their decision affect that?” Carrie was almost too scared to ask. She was going to miss him terribly just not seeing him at school. If he went away she would be heartbroken.

He leaned towards her and suddenly lifted one of his huge hands to her mass of dark hair. He pulled a couple of strands gently and then frowned.

“You have some of this stuff stuck in your hair. It’s not as bad as the chewing gum but it won’t come out by pulling. Well, not pulling gently at any rate. I’m just spreading it.” He glanced down at her face as he pulled a little harder.

Carrie winced slightly and concentrated on
the thin line of dark stubble above his arching top lip. His cheeks were darkened attractively too. She swallowed as she noticed a new bruise coming out along his cheekbone, probably from the latest rugby challenge. He lifted his other hand to cup her face for support and ran his tongue over his perfect white teeth as he focused on her hair.

His hand was surprisingly soft. Carrie resisted the urge to lean into his palm as she felt her heart rate pick up to an alarming rhythm. S
uddenly light headed she took some deep, steadying breaths and moved her face away from his hand.

“Leave it
Dan, I’ll wash it out later.” She didn’t really want to stop him touching her but apart from beginning to feel as though her hair was being pulled from her scalp, she didn’t think she would be able to resist throwing herself into his arms if she stood there much longer. She brushed his hand away and a shiver of pleasure ran down her spine as their fingers met. Daniel caught her hand and she glanced up as he spoke.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

A slight frown marred his forehead as he stared down at her then he dropped her hand and continued to pick silly foam from his fingertips.

Carrie diverted the conversation back to safer ground. “Come on tell me, what are you going to do next year?”

Dan
iel looked down from his great height, frowning at his hand and turning it over, then he looked up again, his dark blue eyes suddenly sparkling at her.

“Don’t laugh, but I’m trying to get into a sports college in the States. I’ve sent off the applications but I haven’t had a response yet. If I get the right results in my A levels I want to go to Atlanta, they have the best training there.”

Carrie was horrified, her heart leapt in her chest and her stomach fell to the floor, but she kept her face and her voice as neutral as possible.

“America! Wow! That’s ambitious. What will the rest of the world do without you? I mean, what will all the rest of the female half of the world do
without you?” She nudged his arm playfully and cemented the smile onto her face, trying not to think of what she would do without him herself.

He smiled widely now, showing his perfectly straigh
t, white teeth, obviously relieved that she wasn’t falling about the floor laughing at him.

“If I can get there I’m not going to miss the chance. It’s a three year course, so it’s not to be taken on lightly, but I have to do something with my education. I’m a bit like you with the dancing. That’s just short term stuff. The rugby isn’t going to last me forever, we g
et too many injuries or are just too old by the time we’re about thirty, so I want something that will get me somewhere in the future too. They run a fantastic sports therapy course alongside the training and that ties in nicely with something else I really want to do. The scholarships are few and far between, but you never know, I may get lucky.” He bent down and picked up her bag, swinging the locker door shut with his huge shoulder and swiping his towel across the drip splattered floor. Then he stood straight again. “Have you told anyone about this bullying?”

The change of subject surprised her. She looked up at him and raised her eyebrows.

“What’s the point? It’ll stop when whoever it is gets bored. It’s such stupid, childish stuff that it’s hardly worth mentioning.” She snorted at the thought of the jam doughnuts. They had been really fresh and incredibly jammy. Anyone half sensible would have eaten them, not stuffed them in her shoes. “I don’t want to make a big fuss about it…But what makes you think it’s bullying anyway? It could just be someone out to have a laugh at my expense.”

For the first time Dan
iel looked uncomfortable. He shifted his feet and glanced away from her. Eventually he mumbled.

“Well, apart from having to help you out every time it happens, somebody just said something. I mean it’s obviously not accidental. I don’t remember who told me, word just gets around. Do you know why they’re doing it?”

Carrie shrugged and was about to dismiss it but then she spoke again.

“
Some people are really up tight about things. Did you know that some girls here get bullied just for being too pretty? Not that I think I have a problem there.” She wrinkled up her nose. There was no danger of her being picked upon for being too attractive. While she knew that she wasn’t ugly, her milk white skin was just a little too pale, her near black hair was almost too dark. Her eyes had no definite colour, changing from slate grey to hazel depending on the light, and her slightly overfull rose red lips made her features striking more than pretty. “I think it’s all to do with that dance video. I think someone’s jealous. It’s probably my ex-best friend Jennifer Crane, who dragged me along to the audition but didn’t get any further, while I did. I think she wanted me to turn the place down, but that would have been stupid. It wouldn’t have made any difference anyway, she would still know that I was given the part while she wasn’t. I’m pretty sure it’s her, but I can’t prove anything.”

Dan
iel handed her bag over, his face a picture of confusion.

“Jennifer Crane? You mean you don’t know it’s…” He paused and then took a deep breath before continuing. “Well
, if she would stoop to doing something like that, just because she didn’t make the grade, she’s an idiot! I can’t stand people like that. She’d do better to put her efforts into trying harder next time. My best friend Paul and I will be loyal to each other no matter what. He’s hoping for a place in America too and I’d love for him to do well even if I didn’t. I’ll be cheering him on regardless of what happens to me. He’s my best friend now and always will be, whatever happens in the future.” He paused and frowned suddenly. “But I don’t understand, what do you mean about not being pretty? I think you’re pretty and the video was great too. At least you dancing girls look better than that sappy bunch of choir boys who sing badly in front of you. You should do another one without them distracting the viewers with their tuneless warbling.” His tone was firm as he grinned down at her.