Bloom

So, we were known as the Laminators. It wasn’t that catchy. But as I followed Neena into the classroom, the name suddenly made sense. Everyone did look as if they’d been put through a laminator – shiny, plastic, new. It was all gleaming teeth, scrubbed faces, fresh socks. Not one grimy fingernail, stray bogey or muddy knee. Mr Grittysnit’s competition had started in earnest, and it looked as if everyone in the Laminators was out to win.

‘Didn’t you read the letter, girls?’ teased the tall, red-haired girl nearby, checking her perfect French braid in a compact mirror. ‘The Grittysnit Star has to look amazing. Not –’ she looked us up and down, smirking – ‘like you’ve been sicked up by a cat.’

I bit my lip.

Chrissie snapped her compact shut and stared pointedly at Neena’s burnt eyebrow and my crumpled shirt.

Neena shrugged. ‘This will scab over soon,’ she said evenly.

Chrissie looked at me with disdainful emerald eyes. ‘What’s your excuse, Suck-up?’

I stared at my shoes. Chrissie was the human equivalent of a funfair mirror. I always felt shorter and chubbier when she was around. How we normally interacted went like this: she’d say something mean; I’d bite my lip and pretend I was too busy thinking about something important to reply; she’d snigger, give me a pitying look and then saunter off. And repeat.

I could feel her eyes boring into me, amused. I continued to admire the view of my black lace-ups.

After a while, she laughed. ‘It’s your choice, I suppose,’ Chrissie said casually, flicking the collar on her immaculate charcoal-grey silk shirt. ‘If you can’t be bothered to make an effort, be my guest. Anyway, it’ll make it easier for me to win the prize.’

The scrawny blonde girl by her side nodded adoringly, her silver braces glinting in the light. ‘Easier, no contest.’ I have to say this for Bella Pearlman, Chrissie’s sidekick: she seemed easy to please. All she needed was a couple of words to repeat once in a while. Entertaining herself in the school holidays must have been a breeze.

I forced a smile out. Good girls don’t fight.

After a pause, they sidled off towards their desks. As they walked away, I busied myself with my rucksack, brushing off imaginary specks of dirt.

When I looked up, Neena was giving me a funny look. ‘When are you going to start standing up to her?’ she asked. ‘You could run circles round her if you tried.’

‘It’s fine,’ I said quickly. ‘I’d rather stay out of her way if she’s in one of her moods. Anyway, as Head of Year, I can’t be seen getting into arguments. That wouldn’t set a good example to anybody else.’

Neena rolled her eyes as we walked towards our desks by the window. But even her Little Miss Judgy act wasn’t going to get me to change. Because no good could come from standing up to Chrissie Valentini. Only last term, a nice supply teacher had gently asked her to stop losing her spelling books. Chrissie’s parents had threatened to sue the school for defamation if the teacher wasn’t fired, and we’d never seen the nice supply teacher again.

Mr Grittysnit did everything Mr Valentini wanted. Chrissie’s father was rich, he was on the board of governors and he gave loads of money to the school every year for school trips and supplies. Plus, he owned a big property-development company that gave Mr Grittysnit a cut-price deal on school extensions, which Mr Grittysnit was very fond of doing.

So, yeah, it wasn’t ever a good idea to cheese off Chrissie. Which meant pretending her jokes were hilarious. Even if they were at my expense.

*

In the Laminators, silence reigned. Everyone sat upright in their chairs, hands folded neatly in their laps, waiting for our shy teacher, Miss Mossheart, to take the register. This was unusual. Normally, she had to beg to be heard above the racket you get when you put thirty eleven-year-olds into one room.

Miss Mossheart flinched if the classroom was too loud, blushed if anybody looked at her longer than two seconds, and if she ever had to tell anyone off would spend the rest of the lesson panting quietly at her desk, trying to get her breath back.

You might wonder why she went to work at Grittysnits in the first place. The word in the corridor was she was Mr Grittysnit’s niece. Apparently, he gave her a job because she failed her Chillz interview and couldn’t find work anywhere else in town.

Her pale eyelashes peeped out through her frizzy brown hair, fluttering rapidly. She reached for her tablet and began to call out names from the register.

‘Robbie Bradbury?’

‘Here,’ said Robbie from the desk in front of ours.

Interesting facts about Robbie:

He’s got a thing about gerbils. He managed to keep his last one, Victoria, in his locker for a whole week in the summer term before she escaped. No one knows where she got to. And this is not a book about a missing gerbil, in case you were wondering. She doesn’t turn up at the end. I’m sure she’s fine.

He’s totally deaf in his right ear. If he’s interested in what you have to say, he turns his left ear towards you really carefully.

Why I like him: he’s funny.

‘Elka Kowalski?’

A big smile spread across Elka’s round face in her desk across the aisle.

‘Here, Miss Mozzheart.’

Interesting facts about Elka:

Elka’s from Poland. She came to live in Little Sterilis two years ago. She and her family live two streets away from us.

She is massively into rock music, particularly an all-female Polish band called the Sisters of Crush.

Elka’s mum works in Chillz too, but on the production line, and not in the bit where the software’s kept, so our mums don’t see each other much. We still give each other the odd Chillz Kidz smile now and again.

Why I like her: I just do.

‘Bertie Troughton?’ said Miss Mossheart.

‘Here,’ whispered Bertie, making a visible effort to speak up.

Interesting facts about Bertie:

He’s a huge bookworm.

He has quite a lot of eczema on his face, neck and hands. This seems to get itchier when Mr Grittysnit is around, and less painful when he is reading.

In Year Four, Bertie won our school’s one and only creative-writing competition. His essay was about a horrible headmaster who got eaten by a snake. The next year, Mr Grittysnit banned creative-writing competitions. But Bertie still likes doodling snakes in his exercise books. Especially when Mr Grittysnit comes into our classroom.

Why I like him: you can’t NOT like Bertie – he’s sweet and kind.

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AFTER THE REGISTER, we filed into the school hall for Assembly.

The hall was buzzing. Excited whispers flew around us, thicker and faster than treacle jetpacks. Kids squirmed and craned their necks to size up their competition: other children. The air was sweet with undertones of shoe polish, iron starch and shampoo.

There was a bustling movement in the doorway. Children straightened their backs and arranged their faces into the ‘nice and polite’ setting.

I did the same, then nudged Neena, who glared. ‘This is ridic—’

‘Shh,’ I hissed.

Mr Grittysnit strode on to the stage, a tall bald man in a grey suit. Everything about him was tidy and precise, from his closely clipped fingernails to the way he walked, every step exactly the same measurement as the last. Even his yellow teeth were perfectly aligned. The only thing remotely untidy about him was the thick thatch of long black hairs which sprouted from his nostrils.