Bloom

I opened it. Swallowed. Flinched. Tried not to wince.

‘What was it this time?’ I asked the girl with black scruffy hair standing on my doorstep.

‘Hydrogen peroxide and sodium iodide.’ She grinned at the memory, which seemed to make her glow with happiness. ‘I threw some soap into the beaker to see how much gas was in there and BOOM!’

‘Bad reaction?’ I asked, glancing at the weeping raw sore where Neena’s right eyebrow used to be.

‘Only from Mum,’ she muttered, jerking her head to indicate the smart-looking woman behind her. ‘The experiment itself went perfectly.’

‘Mujhe takat dijie,’ said Neena’s mum, which I know is Hindi for Give me strength because Mrs Gupta says it about Neena so often.

We shared a knowing look.

Neena went through a lot of eyebrows in the name of science. Basically, when she wasn’t talking, dreaming or thinking about it, she was holed up in a rat-infested shed in her garden, rearranging her face with a dangerously out-of-date chemistry set from a charity shop.

*

Neena and I were born three hours apart. Our mums met in the maternity ward and bonded over a box of home-made Sohan Halwa sweets Mrs Gupta had smuggled in. As a baby, I’d never taken that much notice of Neena, being more interested in things like crying and dribbling, but that all changed at my fifth birthday party. When every other boy and girl started sobbing in my lounge just six minutes after arriving, she’d simply stared at them and went back to shaking each of my presents calmly.

One by one, the other kids were whisked away by their concerned parents – ‘So sorry we can’t stay,’ they’d all said. ‘My little angel’s never done this before – must be a sudden temperature, probably got a bug or something. No, honestly, don’t worry about party bags – wouldn’t want to put you out …’ Cheery Cottage had gradually emptied. Ten minutes into my party, Neena was the only guest left.

I held my breath. Our mothers hovered nervously, holding huge platters of food they’d slaved over all morning. I looked at Neena. Neena looked at me. And then she said something so wise, so profound, so comforting, that I’ve never forgotten it. She said: ‘Cake.’

The four of us polished it all off that afternoon. Neena also sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to me extra loudly, helped me open every single present and refused to leave until we’d sung ten rounds of ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It’. From that day on we’d been best friends for life.

*

‘Ready to go?’ asked Mrs Gupta.

As we set off for school, Neena threw me an appraising glance. ‘Something’s different about you today,’ she said.

‘Is it my hair?’ I patted it carefully. I’d taken extra time over my ponytail that morning, making sure each strand was lying flat. Every detail counted on the first day of the Grittysnit Star competition.

‘No.’

‘My shoes?’ I pointed my feet with a flourish.

‘Sorrel, they’re always shiny.’

‘Do I look taller?’ I asked casually.

Neena threw me a sympathetic glance. ‘Nope.’ She examined me again. ‘I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s definitely something new about you.’

‘Maybe it’s my face. Have I got an inner glow?’

‘You what?’ said Neena, frowning.

‘You know, cos of the Grittysnit Star competition?’

‘It sounds like a load of old methane gas to me.’ She kicked a drinks can out of her way. ‘A holiday means I’ll be away from my lab for a whole seven days.’ She stared into the distance as if she couldn’t think of anything worse. ‘And Mum and Dad will try to drag me out to the beach and stuff. Anyway, I’m hardly off to a great start. Not with this.’ She pointed to the patch of skin where her eyebrow used to be, bright red in the September sunshine, and smirked.

Neena had a point, but I didn’t want to gloat.

When we reached the underpass, she stopped suddenly. ‘Hang on, Mum. This is important.’ Her eyes raked over me. ‘I know what it is! You’re crumpled!’ She stared at my grey shirt approvingly. ‘What happened, Sorrel? Was the iron broken? You’re nearly as scruffy as me.’

At this point, I should have just given up altogether. Forgetting to iron my uniform in the morning was so unlike me I should have recognised it as the sign of doom it was, right there and then.

I might as well have started wearing a leather jacket and tearing around town on a motorbike, such were my chances of winning that competition.

Someone should just have tattooed

on my forehead, which might not have looked very nice, but at least would have acted as a handy hint whenever I brushed my teeth, and saved me from an awful lot of guesswork.

But, this being real life, none of that actually happened. And even though I was totally unprepared for the malevolent dark power I’d unearthed, I still thought I was in control of my life, which was kind of sweet, while also completely wrong.

So I turned on my heel, pushing against the hordes of Grittysnit pupils swarming around us. ‘I’m going home. I’ll do a quick iron and run back. I’ll catch up with you.’

‘If you go home now you’ll be late,’ said Neena.

‘Great,’ I said bitterly as the stream of pupils pushing past us got thicker. ‘It doesn’t matter what I do. I’m off to a terrible start.’

‘Girls,’ said Mrs Gupta, ‘the bell’s rung. Time to go in.’

Neena gave my shoulder a sympathetic squeeze as we walked through the school gates. ‘Look, don’t worry about your clothes, Sorrel. You’ve still got the shiniest school shoes I have ever seen.’

She grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the stairs while the shrill bell clanged in our ears. I ran up behind her towards our classroom, panting a little.

Outside, the sun beat down on the empty playground. The sound of the school gates being slammed shut rang out across the tarmac. My stomach quivered as I followed Neena through the door. I touched my Head of Year badge for luck.

Showtime.

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EVERY SEPTEMBER, ON the first day of school, a very important tradition took place at Grittysnits. Before we walked into the classroom that would be ours for the next year, we’d get a special talk from our headmaster.

Oh ho, you’re probably thinking. Aha. Special talk, eh? Something to kindle a love of learning? A pep talk about wisdom and books and the wonderful things that can happen when you learn and you listen?

Nope.

Mr Grittysnit never talked about books or knowledge or that sort of stuff. No. Mr Grittysnit liked to talk about inventions.

And not just any invention. He wasn’t excited about toy robots, or potted plants that played music from speakers in their leaves. He preferred things that made the world tidier, cleaner, spicker and spanner. He idolised inventions that tidied up human existence and made it all a bit less messy.

And each classroom was named after his favourites.

This term, Mr Grittysnit had pointed at the silver plaque outside our Year Six classroom and fixed us with a solemn stare. ‘There is nothing more satisfying than putting a shiny plastic sheen over things,’ he’d said. ‘The most boring and insignificant things in the world can be transformed with a laminator. Put mediocrity through this machine and it instantly looks better.’

Then he’d glared at us meaningfully for a while. I thought I heard him mutter, ‘If only I could do the same to children’, but I wasn’t completely sure.