Glitter

Chapter 8 the grave… (#ulink_a9439f6f-a45d-5f47-abfb-9231776349c7)

The stairway out of our flats is very busy at 8.25 in the morning. There are people in smart suits with briefcases and mums with buggies and babies and kids wearing the same clothes as me, all pushing and shoving their way down the stairs. I turn left like Dad said and follow the trail of black and red uniforms that spills out on to the street. I’m scared. I’ve heard all about state schools from other people at my old school and they sound noisy and rough and big. Alice’s cousin says there are loads of fights and people get hurt. Maybe I should have argued harder with my dad and Mr Jenkins and forced them to let me stay. What I don’t understand is why my dad is always so mean to me and not to Sebastian? Sebastian gets everything he wants. I’ve been as good as gold my whole life and tried so hard not to make a nuisance of myself but still my dad holds me as far away as possible from him, like I’ve got sick all down my front and am covered in a highly contagious rash. But none of that matters now. I can forgive him for it all because he got me a surprise violin for my birthday. A warm little rush of excitement races through my body and makes me want to skip.

Down on the street an old man is struggling to get into his old people buggy car thing. He’s puffing and panting and struggling to get his old legs moving. When he sees me he calls out.

“You seen Cali this morning?” he asks.

“Sorry,” I say, “I’m new here, I don’t know who Cali is. Can I help?”

“I just need a hand,” he says. “If I can just rest on your arm a minute then I can pull this stupid old leg up and get on. It’s lottery day, you see, I’ve got to get my ticket. It’s a £13 million rollover.”

“Hi,” says a girl with a million tiny plaits in her hair tied with multicoloured braid. “You need a hand, Ivor?”

“There you are,” says Ivor, looking relieved at Cali’s arrival. “I thought you’d abandoned me for the day.”

“You know I’d never do that, Ivor,” she laughs, helping him into his buggy, like she’s done it a hundred times before.

“Haven’t seen you around before,” says Cali, when Ivor is safely in his buggy and heading off towards the shops and we’re making our way to school.

“We’ve just moved here,” I say. “I’m Liberty Parfitt, what’s your name?”

“I’m Cali,” she says. “You know, you wanna tone that accent of yours down, it’ll get you into trouble at The Grave. The other kids will eat you alive! But stick with me, Libs, and you’ll be safe. What year you in?”

“Seven.”

“Cool,” she smiles, “same as me. Where did you find that accent, Libs? It’s terrible! You sound like you’re related to the Queen or something.”

“Not sure,” I say, trying hard to listen to my own voice. “I’ve always had it, I suppose.”

Then Cali cracks up laughing and staggers around in fits of giggles. “Well, if you take my advice, girl, you’ll ditch it pretty soon. Fitting in is what it’s all about at The Grave, and accents like yours just don’t. OK?”

“OK. Why do you call it ‘The Grave’?” I ask.

“You’ll see,” she says, “soon enough. You sure do have a lot to learn, Libs, but first off you gotta start dropping your T’s and you gotta shake your voice up a bit. Speak easy, like me. Like cas-u-al.”

“I’ll try,” I say, “but it’s just natural to me, I don’t know how I would even begin to change it.”

“That’s where I come in,” she says. “Just listen real careful to me and you’ll pick it up in no time. Pretend you’re acting or something, you know? Oh, and The Grave? It’s Cherry Grove, Cherry Grave, get it? It’s like a graveyard inside those walls. Nothing good ever happens; it’s just rubbish, Libs. All the teachers and most of the kids are like the living dead, sucking graveyard air,” Cali makes a spooky face, “and no one even cares about the education. It’s more about surviving than learning. It’s a dead-end place from beginning to end, preparing you for rubbish jobs when you leave. Except for me that is, Liberty Parfitt. Me? I’ve got big plans. I’m going somewhere. You’ll see. So, why did you move here then?”

“Credit crunch,” I say. “My dad’s business went bust so I had to leave my school. We’re staying in a friend’s flat until we get back on our feet.”

“Posh school, I bet?” she asks. “I was born to go to one of them, I promise you! I’m bright enough. It’s just the stork got lost on the way and I got delivered to the wrong family.”

“It was just school to me,” I say. “I’d been there since I was seven years old. But I’m not there any more, Cali, I’m here and I need to get on and get used to it, just like everything else in my life.”

When we reach The Grave thousands of kids swarm like black and red bees through the gates. Unfamiliar sounds buzz around me and I can’t quite tell if I’m more scared or more curious. In all of Alice’s wildest dreams and in all of mine, we couldn’t have imagined that I’d find myself in a place like this. But here I am amidst a thousand black and red bees; with my new friend Cali, who has a million tiny plaits in her hair tied with multicoloured braid.

Cali comes to the school office with me and somehow manages to persuade the lady there to let me be in the same class as her. She promises be my “class buddy” and show me around. The corridors here are long and grey and dark and smell of old cabbage and disinfectant. There are no flowers decorating the place, like in my old school and no gold carpets on the floors. Instead, everywhere is decorated with black and red bumblebee children zooming along the corridors and screeching up and down the stairs.

“Slow down, ladies and gentlemen,” shouts a teacher, “and keep your voices down.”

But no one listens. Everyone just carries on running and screaming. No one holds doors open for other people or offers to carry the teachers’ heavy bags. I feel small in this big place and am worried that I won’t fit in. I wish I hadn’t tied my hair back so neatly, I look stupid. I pull off my hair tie and shake my hair loose.

“Cool hair,” says Cali, looking at my bright red curls.

“Yours too,” I smile.

At my old school I knew every single child and teacher by name and everyone there knew me. Here I know nobody, except Cali and I’m glad to have her next to me, she somehow makes me feel brave, like I could even face my dad with her around.

My first lesson is drama. Our teacher is at least 190 years old and she makes us read scenes from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I quite like Shakespeare, but all the rest of the kids are groaning with boredom. Shakespeare’s only fun if you know how to read it properly, otherwise it’s just a string of difficult words that are hard to understand. My old drama teacher taught us to read it in time with a heartbeat, that way the whole thing suddenly comes alive.

A boy with spiky hair, who is called Dylan, is interrupting our reading by having a fight with our teacher, Mrs MacDougall. He’s going on about the fact that she’s infringing his human rights by asking him to turn his mobile phone off during lesson time and Mrs MacDougall is trying to give him a calm and reasoned argument to dispute this. I know she’s not really feeling calm inside because a little stream of sweat is running down her face and on to her blouse collar, making a stain. I am shocked. I have never seen a pupil argue with a teacher before.

A girl with white-blonde hair holds up a red card and runs out of the room.

“She’s allowed to do it,” says Cali, seeing my surprise. “She has an anger problem, which means she sometimes just bursts into one big rage that disrupts the whole class and frightens the teachers. So it’s better for everyone if she gets herself to the ‘green room’ as quickly as possible to calm herself down.”

Clusters of girls are whispering and giggling and not paying attention to any of what’s going on. Some boys at the back of the class are shooting bits of squished up paper through their biros to see who can be first to hit the bull’seye, which happens to be Mrs MacDougall’s head. There’s so much going on in our classroom that my eyes don’t know where to look next and I’m finding it hard to keep my attention on Shakespeare. Cali is sighing and gently bashing her head on the table in despair.