The Hidden Princess (7 page)

Help me, Connie. Please
. There was something more real about the Voice this time, more definite, less blurred around the edges. Like he was much closer now. And now, just on the very edge of my hearing, I sensed a gentle exhalation. Someone
breathing
. The hairs on the back of my neck froze, like grass caught in a winter frost.

And I looked up to find a boy standing right in front of my desk.

There he was,
right there
, looking down at me with a smile like he was desperate to laugh: taller than anyone I’d ever met, wrapped in some kind of crazy cloak of woven white feathers. And that face – all gorgeous hard angles and a mouth to make you want to die and long dark eyelashes – there was something so familiar about it, like I’d seen him somewhere before, known him in another life, another place. For a second, all I could hear was blood pounding in my ears.

He was so, so beautiful.

He smiled again.
Connie
. His lips didn’t move but I heard him calling my name, and I knew his voice. I’d heard it so many times before.

It’s him. The boy from the Dream
.

Now for the first time I could actually see him. I sat, staring and helpless as a freezing chill spread through my body, holding me rigid in my seat. I couldn’t move and I couldn’t speak – all I could be certain of was that I was the only person in the room who knew this was happening. Tia Marshall was sitting just three seats away, staring straight through him. The supply teacher didn’t even glance our way.

“What do you want?” I whispered. “Who are you?”

I’ve had so many names
. He smiled, so achingly and ridiculously gorgeous.
I need your help, Connie. You’ll help me, won’t you? I’m trapped, so close to the Reach. I’ve been a prisoner for such a long time
.

All I could do was stare, silent and helpless. He wasn’t real. No one else could see him. This wasn’t really happening. But at the same time, he was right in front of me, the feathers of his white cloak rippling faintly in a breeze snaking in through a window the supply teacher had jammed open with an old textbook.

He smiled again and I couldn’t breathe; I wanted to reach out and brush one finger down the side of his face, crook it behind his ear, feel those black curls of hair in my hands. Oh, God. How could no one else hear my heart drumming, blood racing through my veins?

I know I can trust you
, he said, so gentle and yet so desperate.
All you need to do is move one of the crosses, Connie. One of those iron crosses
.

He was talking about the Reach. About the freaky old crucifixes Mum insisted on leaving nailed above every window and every door. Those silly fairy stories. But he was real – the boy was real. And
trapped
.

Just one
. He reached out as if to touch my face.
Just one iron cross, Connie. Please
.

I opened my mouth, still not knowing how to reply, but before I could speak the headache hit me. Everything went white, then black. I couldn’t see him any more: he was gone, just gone, my beautiful boy. I’d lost him – just at the moment I’d finally seen his face. How could I help if I couldn’t find him? I’d never felt so desperate, so helpless. My head pounded and I swallowed wave after wave of nausea, and only the fear of throwing up in front of our entire maths class gave me the strength to more or less keep my cool.

“Connie Harker?”

I looked up. The supply teacher was right in front of my desk, exactly where the boy had been standing. She looked pissed off, like she’d had enough for the day already and it was only half past nine.

“Get up,” she said, obviously thinking that I’d been taking her for a ride just like Kyle and the others.

I’m losing it
. I couldn’t move.
Hearing voices. Seeing people who aren’t really there
. The headache pulsed behind my eyes, relentless.

“Oh, leave her alone, Miss – she’s tired. Up all night.” Kyle, of course, sleazy as ever, giving the whole class a smug grin, enjoying the chorus of catcalls. I’d fix him later.

To her credit, the supply ignored Kyle completely, clearly made of tougher stuff than most. “I said, get up.”

I wanted to tell her I was feeling sick, that my head was pounding, but all I could think about was the black-haired boy who’d been standing in her place just seconds before, his cloak of pure white feathers. It didn’t make sense. How could I see someone who wasn’t really there? And with such bizarre clothes – that cloak, those feathers – it was just like something from a fairy tale. I hauled myself to my feet, holding on to the desk. Swaying like a drunk.

The supply teacher gave me a very weird look. “Listen, young lady. If you’re tired enough to fall asleep in my class, I suggest you explain the reason why to your head of year. I believe Mrs Anderson is in her office now.”

More catcalls from Kyle and some of the other more retarded members of the class. The supply teacher ignored them and so did I. My head throbbed, pounding and pounding till I wanted to scream or curl up into a ball in the dark or both. Didn’t she realize that if I moved another inch I was going to throw up?

“Con, are you OK?” Blue sounded like he was a thousand miles away instead of sitting just two rows ahead. “Miss, she looks really, really—”

And I never heard the end of Blue’s sentence, because waves of darkness just rose and rose until I couldn’t see the classroom any more, and all the voices faded, even
his
, and I didn’t even feel the pain as my head hit the floor, which Blue told me later it did, with a horrible crack like a dropped egg.

The sickbay reeked of antiseptic and B.O., which really wasn’t helping my intense need to vomit. I leaned back in the chair, closing my eyes. The upholstery stank of stale cigarettes, obviously dating from the days when it wasn’t completely illegal for teachers to smoke in the staffroom. Even at my school, I doubted that anyone had ever had the cheek to light up in the sickbay. I’d given Mrs Anderson Joe’s mobile number, and now all I could do was wait. I’d pretty much managed to fend off most of her questions. Unlike the nurse, who blatantly suspected me of being hungover, and just handed me a photocopied sheet of paper about the possible signs of concussion, Mrs Anderson had seemed genuinely worried. It made a change considering usually all she ever did was tell me what a terrible disappointment I was.
I don’t want to see your abilities wasted, Connie. That’s the biggest tragedy here
. I was tired of listening to it.

“Connie. What the bloody crap is going on?”

Definitely not Mrs Anderson. I opened my eyes, squinting into the light: Joe, wearing his ragged old jeans and a cashmere jumper Mum had given him three years ago that was now full of holes. He sounded just the same as always, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at him let alone answer. “Come on,” he said, impatient. “Let’s get out of here before they ask either of us any more questions.”

He just stood there waiting as I got to my feet, trying to ignore the urge to puke up my guts all over the sickbay floor.

“Take care, Connie,” said Mrs Anderson, appearing behind Joe in the doorway. She’d pushed her specs back into her frizzy grey hair, her face taut with worry. “Please do keep a good eye on her, Joe. It’s really not like Connie to faint and if she shows any signs of concussion, straight to A&E, OK? She’s never usually ill, are you?” She raised one eyebrow, a trick I’d always wished I could master. “Never off school unless we have one of those unfortunate incidents like last term.”

At any other time I would have said,
When you suspended me, you mean?
But I felt too ill to risk it. Mrs Anderson was always giving me crap, but I knew that at least she liked me, which was one of the two reasons I hadn’t been permanently excluded: that and the fact that my exam results were predicted to single-handedly propel the school right up the league tables. Not that I’d be taking any GCSEs at this school if Dad got his way.

“Right,” Joe said, which judging from his tone was Yorkshire for
fuck off
.

“What am I going to do about the exam? It’s meant to be this afternoon. My dad’s going to kill me if I don’t take it.”

Mrs Anderson raised her eyebrows. “I’m sure we can rearrange the entrance exam.” She gave me a funny little half smile. “To be frank, Connie, we don’t want to lose a girl of your intelligence, but I’m perfectly happy to explain matters to your father and to the school if need be. I really do think I should call your mother, though.”

My chest constricted. I knew Dad wouldn’t listen to Mrs Anderson: he was far too arrogant to take a teacher seriously, and so far as he was concerned, I was starting at Lissy’s old school in September, like it or not. It was a foregone conclusion that I’d pass the entrance exam. “Please don’t call Mum. She’ll only worry. The funeral’s tomorrow and she’ll never be able to get back to the airport in time to catch a flight, anyway.” I couldn’t stand thinking of Mum arriving home just in time to discover half the teenage population in a hundred-mile radius congregating in the woods behind the Reach. That would put a rocket underneath her if nothing else would. Maybe then at least she’d finally show some interest. How far had news of the party spread? I’d forbidden anyone to mention it on Facebook, on pain of death, but it would only take one comment for the whole thing to go up like an atomic mushroom cloud.

Joe stood silently, just waiting. There was something about him that made you not want to mess. Even Mrs Anderson seemed to pick up on it, and she could face a classroom mutiny without even flinching. She glanced at him briefly, as if appraising his suitability as a chaperone one final time, then nodded. “OK, Connie. We’ll see you on Monday. Take it easy over the weekend, won’t you?” She gave me one of those awful searching looks – her speciality – and I realized she’d heard rumours about the party, guessing I was at the centre of it all, even if no one had told her as much.
Please don’t say anything
, I prayed – not that Joe was likely to care, anyway – but Mrs Anderson just held the door open for us, and gave me another long, hard look before saying, “Take care, Connie, won’t you?”

I followed Joe out to the van without a word and he slid into the driver’s seat beside me, moving with bored, lazy grace. His battered old jeans were ripped at the knee, and when he reached for the steering wheel the worn-out cuff of his jumper grazed the back of his hand. He smelled faintly of washing powder and something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

“What’s wrong?” Joe asked, not even looking at me as he pulled out of the school car park. I’d been totally called out for staring at him. Red heat spread up my chest, an embarrassing and incriminating blush blooming right across my face.

“Nothing.”
Stop staring at your stepbrother, Connie. It’s really not cool. You’ve already made a move on him while drunk. This is not a good development
.

In the back of my mind I heard Amy laugh, saying,
Guys are like buses, Con. You spend ages waiting, thinking you’ll be alone for the rest of your life, and then they all come along at once
. Right. Except that I was obsessing over one boy who was a complete figment of my imagination, with a cloak of woven white feathers, and blatantly ogling another who happened to be my stepbrother, and who incidentally was also six years older than me and still in love with my dead sister.

You’re a loser of epic proportions, Connie Harker
. Telling myself as much didn’t help.

Keeping his eyes on the road, Joe changed gear. His hands were tanned from working outside, dusted with fine golden hairs. “No, I mean what happened at school? Why did you pass out?”

Oh, God. Was it actually possible to go any redder? I looked down at the Tippex stain on my navy school skirt. “I don’t know. I fainted, I suppose. Nothing Mum needs to know about, OK? I’m on special report already.” Being a juvenile delinquent was actually kind of embarrassing now I was sitting there in the van with Joe. I didn’t feel like some kind of cool rebel then. I felt small and stupid.

He laughed, then, for the first time. “Why?”

I was almost too humiliated to tell him. “We went on a school trip and I took a bottle of whisky. This girl got really ill, Lucy Bentley. It was bad. She got in tons of trouble with her parents, and I was suspended. Seriously, Joe, Mum really doesn’t need to know about today. She was close to not going to this funeral, but she’s named as an executor of the will and I’m supposed to be sitting the entrance exam for – for boarding school.” I couldn’t bring myself to say
Lissy’s old school
. I gazed out of the window. “My dad’s going to go crazy when he finds out I got sent home instead. “He’s convinced himself that going away to some prison camp will make me less of a screw-up.”

Joe pulled over into a lay-by to let a tractor past, his eyes fixed on the narrow lane ahead. “Right. Throwing some money at the problem.”

“I’m a
problem
?” Was that really how everyone saw me? A pain in the neck, like a broken boiler.

Joe laughed. “Come on, of course you’re a problem. You’re a bloody nutter.” He hauled the van out into the road again. “You look rough,” he went on. “Maybe just get some rest.”

I shook my head. “I really don’t want to go to sleep. I really don’t.” And the words were out before I had time to reconsider: “Joe, I keep having these bizarre dreams. All the time. It’s scaring me, OK? Seriously.” I stopped short of telling him about the boy. He was my secret. Just for me.

Joe shot me a funny look then, like he was sizing me up. “Don’t be daft. You do look really knackered and stressed. No wonder you’re having weird dreams. Don’t worry about this exam thing. You passed out in school – it’s not like you did it on purpose. Your dad can’t exactly blame you for that.”

“No way, he’s gong to think I did it on purpose to get out of the exam. He knows I don’t want to change schools.” I squeezed my eyes shut. There wasn’t a whole lot Dad could do to me – Elena wouldn’t allow me to cross the threshold of their fancy apartment in London, and Mum knew that it was pointless to try grounding me when I could just let myself out of the house in the middle of the night. But even so, Dad in a rage was always horrendous. It was the way he didn’t even raise his voice. The way he was so
disappointed
.