Plan B

Chapter Seven

To Megan’s obvious annoyance, Philippa continued sitting next to Fran in every lesson they shared.  Fran welcomed it, even if she found it a little strange that Philippa kept blushing and acting shy around her at odd moments.  Some part of her brain had its suspicions, but she ignored them as best she could and tried to focus on her work.  Outside lessons, Philippa seemed to spend most of her time talking to Matt and Tristan whenever Megan didn’t turn up to drag her away.

As well as trying to get all of her homework done, Fran kept searching for a way to get back at Kevin and Simon.  Joey and his two friends seemed to be lying low after Arthur’s ‘talk’ to them.  Kevin and Simon, by contrast, took every possible opportunity to torment her.  By Thursday, after enduring several days of being de-booked and derisive comments, and still without some way of coming back at them, she returned to her room to find that it had been ransacked.

The worst part of it was that it wasn’t just her side of the room that had suffered.  Quite apart from her sheets and duvet being pinned onto the ceiling over Brookie’s collection of Bruno posters, Brookie’s bed had also been upended, his desk chair had been taken to pieces, and Fran knew that Brookie would murder her if he came back to find some of his favourite posters partially ripped or torn down.

Fran dropped her books onto the blank mattress and sank face down onto the bed with a whimper, praying with all her might that nothing had happened to Brookie’s fitness machines.  She might be able to repair his office chair, but the machines were beyond her.  She would at least have just over a week to fix Brookie’s side of the room, but it wasn’t even that messy compared to hers.  It looked like somebody had taken particular care and delight in removing each individual piece of paper from her files and tearing out every single page in every book before cutting them into pretty paper snowflakes to decorate the floor.  She kicked her feet moodily against the bed frame.  My teachers are going to kill me.  Class books were expensive.  Her wardrobe had also been emptied, with a number of her clothes pinned up to her corkboard.  Fran thanked her lucky stars that she’d put her spare chest compressor into the wash at lunchtime.  If somebody had found that, there would have been problems.

She didn’t even realise the door had opened until Rico gave voice to a loud profanity.

“What happened here?” he tacked on as an afterthought.

“Dunno.”  Fran kicked the bed frame again and then internally cursed herself as her big toe started throbbing.  Rico wandered further into the room and Fran buried her face in the mattress.

“Is somebody trying to get you killed?” came Rico’s muffled voice.  “Brookie is going to freak if he sees this.”

Fran rolled over with a loud sigh and let her arms flop out beside her.  “The only people with personal vendettas against me are Joey, a girl in my year, and Kevin and Simon.”

Rico groaned and returned to Fran’s side of the room.  “You shouldn’t make yourself a target.  While Brookie’s not here, they can use him to get at you.”

“Yay me.”

“If you want, I’ll help you tidy up later.  I actually came here to tell you from Piers that you can’t just do your own thing during the games sessions without approval – you need to go to the Games office and sort out your activities during games slots so the Games master knows you’re not just wasting time.”

“What’s he going to do, send me on a walk?” Fran scoffed.  “He’ll never know if I just come back here and play Mario Kart.”

Rico smiled sympathetically and checked his watch.  “I wouldn’t bank on it.  I’m going to get changed – I was supposed to be on the pitch ten minutes ago.”