Plan B

Chapter Twenty

Fran’s mood deteriorated when she discovered that Brookie had gone and told Mr Carson about the smoking incident.  She was called into Carson’s office immediately after morning check in, and was fortunate to be let off with just a stern warning that next time she would get suspended.  According to Tristan, Carson was usually lenient towards first-time offenders provided their records were otherwise good.

The other boys she was friends within her year had distanced themselves after the incident in biology with Megan.  Tristan assured Fran that it was because they were just trying to adjust and needed a little time and space, but Fran knew that it was because she hadn’t told them and they were creeped out.

Mathilda, by contrast, couldn’t have cared less.  She had such a no-nonsense attitude towards everything that Fran wished she’d known the girl her entire life.  Provided she got good marks and was happy with her life, Mathilda quite genuinely didn’t care what other people thought about her, and it made Fran green with envy.  Her survival at Darkwood practically revolved around what people thought of her and the image she cultivated.

“They’ll get over it,” Mathilda told Fran matter-of-factly when Fran complained to her about Tristan, Matt and Sean’s treatment of her.  “Don’t worry.”

“Yes, but—”  Fran bit her lip and fell silent as their English teacher stalked past to tell off two girls at the back who were flirting outrageously with one of the boys and disturbing all of their nearby classmates.  She sighed and picked up her anthology of Christina Rossetti poems, hiding her face so that Mathilda wouldn’t see her going red.  “Look….”

She caught herself just in time and bit her tongue, hard.  She really, really wanted to be able to tell Mathilda that she was a girl.  Mathilda was probably the only person in the school that she trusted enough, and she got the feeling that Mathilda would take it all calmly in her stride.  It would relieve so much pressure if she just had one person she could confide in on a regular basis.

Then she remembered something else: Mathilda hated being lied to.

Nah, she really wouldn’t take that well….

“What?” Mathilda asked her.

Fran grimaced.  “Nothing.”

Mathilda scowled at her.  “What’s eating you, Frankie?”

With a sigh, Fran put down her book.  “I’ll tell you if it gets any worse.”

Mathilda pursed her lips, clearly unsatisfied with the reply, but at that moment, the teacher clapped his hands and announced that the lesson was over, and she and Fran busied themselves with packing up their stuff.  They joined the stampede towards lunch in the corridor, Mathilda adjusting her satchel strap over her shoulder.

“I hate Monday lunch times,” she complained as they were jostled by a troupe of lower sixth girls.  “It’s the best meal, so everybody goes and you inevitably end up at the back of the queue, and just when you get to the front, it turns out they’ve run out of sausages and Yorkshire puddings and you get something vastly inferior.”

Fran’s lips twitched upwards in a smile, but it quickly faded when she spotted a familiar upper sixth boy coming from the opposite direction.  Brookie was talking to Bernard, but kept glancing over his shoulder as though something were chasing him.  He ignored Fran as he and Bernard passed, and Fran glared daggers into his back until her eardrums registered the screaming and Mathilda tugged her into the side of the wall.

“I also hate Brookie’s fan club,” Mathilda observed as a horde of girls from all years stormed passed, screaming and shouting the boy’s name wildly, along with several marriage requests and offers to do things that Fran was sure weren’t allowed in school.  “The guy himself seems perfectly nice, and I don’t understand how he copes with that rabble of drooling wolves, but I think that most of his fans are clinically insane.”