The Angel of Nitshill Road (4 page)

So Penny went in as well.

When she came out again, Celeste tried one last time. Sean and Wayne pushed her back, while Barry Hunter stood with his arms folded, smirking.

Shrugging, Celeste strolled away.

Barry Hunter and his gang stayed where they were, ready to block the lavatories against Celeste, right through the break. They kept an eye on her each time
she ambled past, arm in arm with Lisa and Penny. She came just close enough each time to keep them on their guard. But she didn't seem bothered. And she certainly wasn't desperate. In fact, she seemed to be the most unruffled person in the playground, because everyone else was rushing from one knot of friends to the next, chattering excitedly.

Just before the bell rang, some of the other girls came near Barry Hunter's gang outside the lavatories. They giggled and pointed and stuffed their hands over their mouths. But Barry didn't realise they were laughing at him until Mr Fairway called him sharply into line, and he heard the whispers for the very first time.

‘Haven't you
heard
?'

‘Celeste went into the
Boys
!'

‘She just walked straight in there!'

‘Into the
Boys
!'

And Mr Fairway heard, too. He stared down at Celeste who was, as usual, gazing up at him with her imperturbable smile. Surely it couldn't be true! Not even Celeste . . .!

No! It must be one of those silly tales that runs round and round a school.

He took another worried peep at her.

No! Surely not even Celeste!

While Mr Fairway was fetching the register from the office, Barry Hunter took his bad temper out on Mark.

‘Shake!' he said, stopping him getting to his desk, and shoving his hand out.

Mark put his own hands safely behind his back and shook his head.

‘Leave me alone,' he muttered. ‘I wasn't bothering you.'

‘That isn't very nice,' said Barry. ‘I only want to make friends properly.'

He grinned in his lordly way at everyone who was sitting there, silently watching.

‘Go on,' he told Mark again. ‘Shake hands.'

Mark tried to back away between the desks. But Barry Hunter followed him.

‘Shake, and I'll give you a sweetie,' he wheedled, as if he were talking to a baby. When she heard the word ‘sweetie', Penny's hand slid automatically into her pocket. Then she remembered that as she was walking into Mr Hamid's shop that morning, she'd suddenly heard Celeste's pure clear voice ringing like an echo in her brain: ‘If Penny stopped stuffing her face with crisps and sweeties all day long, she wouldn't stay he shape she is now.'
Something had made her just wave at Mr Hamid, then turn and walk out. So now she sat quietly clinking the coins that were still in her pocket, while she watched Mark going red in the face, and saying:

‘I don't want a sweetie.'

He turned away. But Barry Hunter was too quick for him. Catching Mark by the arm, he forced him round and squeezed his hand so tightly that Mark yelped.

Then he gave Mark's wrist a twist-burn.

‘See!' he crowed. ‘I told you I'd give you a sweetie! A big barley sugar!'

The tears rolled down behind Mark's spectacles. He stumbled off blindly, just as Mr Fairway came back through the door.

‘Stop clattering about, Mark!' said Mr Fairway. ‘Sit
down
.'

All afternoon Barry Hunter made life difficult for poor old Mark. He tripped him up when he was called to Mr Fairway's
desk. While Mark was up there, Barry took Mark's pencil-box and hid it behind the books in the corner. He dropped Mark's woolly on the floor and trod a huge footprint on it. And when Mr Fairway went out to fetch some more paper, Barry stood on his chair and announced that Mark gave walking-funny lessons every Saturday morning down at Marigold's smelly old church.

Marigold just sat there pretending she wasn't listening. But Mark took the chance of Mr Fairway being out of the room to crash about, trying to find his pencil-box.

‘Sit
down
!' Mr Fairway said when he came back. ‘I'm sick of telling you, Mark! Stay at your desk!'

‘But –'

‘No
buts
. Just sit there,
please
, and stop disturbing everyone.'

Celeste rose to her feet.

‘I think you ought to know –' she began to explain.

But Mr Fairway had had enough.

‘Sit down, Celeste,' he said. ‘When I want your opinion, I'll ask for it.'

Celeste sat down. All afternoon she never spoke a word. Mr Fairway smiled at her several times, trying to cajole her into answering questions he knew perfectly well she could get right. Each time she coldly turned her face away and gazed pointedly out of the window. Every few minutes she glanced at her watch, and drummed her fingers lightly on the desk top.

Mr Fairway was as glad as the rest of them when the last bell rang.

Out in the corridor, Barry Hunter pushed his way over to Celeste. You could tell from the look on his face that he was going to pay her out for trying to tell on him.

Calmly, Celeste waited till he was two feet away, then opened her mouth and screamed. Everyone stopped shoving towards the two cloakrooms and turned to stare. No one had ever heard anything like it. You'd think a police car had switched on its siren inside a biscuit tin. The noise was prodigious.

Barry Hunter backed off, fast.

As promptly as she'd turned the scream on, Celeste turned it off again.

‘You'll catch it if Mrs Brown heard that,' Barry Hunter jeered.

‘You'll catch it, too,' warned Celeste. ‘I'll tell her all the things you did to Mark.'

Just as she said his name, Mark stumbled out of the classroom, last as usual, and tripped over one of his own feet.

Barry Hunter snorted with amusement.

‘I don't know why you keep sticking up for him,' he said scornfully to Celeste. ‘He's
weird
.'

Mark's face went scarlet.

‘I'm not weird!'

‘Well, you're not
normal
, are you?' taunted Barry. He poked Mark in the chest, and peered closely at his face through the thick bottle glasses, as if he were looking at some insect through a microscope. ‘No. You couldn't say you were
normal
.'

Suddenly Celeste was there, between the two of them.

‘And you
are
, are you?' she demanded.

She turned to everyone in the corridor – not just the people from their own class, but everyone else who was shuffling into the cloakrooms.

‘Who wants to be
normal
, if normal's like Barry Hunter? Barry Hunter's a bully! He's spiteful and horrid! He steals and hides things! He's a slyboots and his only real pleasure comes from making the people round him unhappy! So who
wants to be
normal
?'

She gazed round.

‘Come on! Speak up! Say if you want to be
normal
!'

The dead silence in the corridor spread to the cloakrooms on either side. Everyone was watching Barry Hunter and Celeste. But no one said a word.

‘Right!' Celeste yelled, turning back to him. ‘Now you know, don't you! No one in this whole school wants to be normal, if being normal means being like
you
!'

Dumbstruck, the whole school watched as she slammed out.

Barry Hunter shrugged.

‘She's mad,' he announced. ‘She's completely off her rocker. I reckon she's even more weird than Mark the Martian. She ought to be locked up.'

One or two of them caught his eye, but nobody grinned or nodded. Nobody
answered him. He was on his own. Too many of them were thinking privately how nice it would be if Barry Hunter was locked out of school. Or stuck in hospital for months after being run over. Or even
dead
. Over the years he'd ruined so many lessons, spoiled so many games, made so many of them so unhappy. Hardly a child in the school could not remember lying in bed, dreading the day to come, thinking how wonderful school could be if people like Barry Hunter were kept in control, and they could get on with their work and enjoy their breaks – just have a normal day.

A normal school day. Wouldn't that be
weird
?

Next morning, Celeste came into school holding a big black book. Its cover was patterned with gold. Tucked down its spine was a gold pen that wrote in eight separate colours. You could choose which you wanted by twisting a tiny wheel on the end.

Everyone crowded round excitedly.

‘What's in the book, Celeste?'

‘These pages are all
blank
.'

‘Are you going to write in it?'

All she would say was, ‘Wait and see.'

They didn't have to wait long. Only a few minutes later Barry Hunter came swooping round the corner, saw Marigold, and stopped to sniff.

‘What's that foul smell? Is it you, Marigold?'

Marigold turned away.

He followed, sniffing ostentatiously. Then he swooped off again. When Marigold turned back, Celeste was behind her, holding the black book.

‘Now what
exactly
did he say to you?'

Marigold smeared the tears across her cheek, and tried to pretend she hadn't heard.

‘Come on,' Celeste ordered. ‘Unbutton your beak! I have to write it down.'

Marigold stared. She stared at Celeste, then at the black book in her hand. Her eyes widened in amazement.

Then, though her eyes filled with tears when she had to repeat it, she answered Celeste's question.

‘He said, “What's that foul smell? Is it you, Marigold?”'

Celeste wrote it down. Everyone crowded round to watch as Celeste's golden pen moved steadily across the lines of the
black book, writing the date and time neatly in the margin, then everything that happened, down to the fact that Marigold was crying.

‘You needn't put that in,' Lisa said.