Once

Five

The History exam went fine, as Elle had hoped it would. She'd looked round as she filed into the hall, trying to see if the mystery new boy was anywhere in sight, but thankfully he wasn't. Obviously he didn't take History - either that or his old school was on a different exam board, and he'd taken his test already. Either way she was glad to be able to put him out of her mind and focus on the rise of the Third Reich for a couple of hours.

But as they trooped out into the sunshine, and everyone was chatting excitedly about which questions they'd answered and what they'd put, Elle suddenly found Maggie standing beside her. For just a second Elle had jumped at the sight of her. Her long black hoodie, hood pulled up over her head despite the intense lunchtime heat, had given her the momentary look of someone playing a witch in a play, right down to the pale little moon of a face peering out from under the rim of that hood.

She didn't ask about the exam, as Elle knew she wouldn't. Much like Jax, Maggie didn't really care either way whether she passed History or not. History had been a subject Maggie had to take, merely as a way of not taking French. In a school as small as theirs, their options for GCSE subjects had been sadly limited.

"So Jax told me you guys saw a new guy this morning," she said. "Like, a new student. Is that right?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Elle replied. It was always easy talking to Maggie. She never bothered with the introductory smalltalk that slowed you down; just launched right into the bit of the conversation she actually wanted to have.

"She said Russell thought he was fit."

"Russell thinks everyone's fit."

Maggie smiled.

"True. And he also thinks he's gay, apparently?"

"Again, not an uncommon phenomenon - though usually with that I think it's more a case of wishful thinking."

"And what did you think?"

"About what - him being fit or him being gay? Because I'm hardly an expert on either of those things, y'know."

"I guess I meant... what did you think he was like?"

Elle gave her a sideward look.

"Why do you ask?"

"I dunno." Maggie shrugged. "Jax just said you came over a bit weird when you saw him. I wondered if maybe you'd seen him before - or if you maybe noticed something odd about him."

"Well, I've definitely never seen him before. And as for noticing something odd..." Elle trailed off, frowning to herself. When she spoke again she didn't really answer the question. "It seems bizarre to me that he's starting here in the last week of term."

"If he is starting here. Maybe he's just visiting - like a sort of taster day or something. Or maybe he's, like, an exchange student."

"Both those things still sound like completely mad things to do on the last week of term."

Maggie stood frowning to herself for a minute, lost in thought. Then, at last, she just shrugged.

"You're right," she said. "It's weird. We're having lunch in the art studio, you coming?"

Elle opened her mouth to answer, then paused. She gave a slight smile.

"I'll be there soon. I'm just going to run my textbook back up to the History classroom."

Maggie frowned at her.

"Isn't Mr Reid just collecting all our old textbooks in form next week?" she said. "Just hang onto it until then. You don't need to take it back."

"I know. But I don't really fancy hanging onto it much longer than I need to. It's been weighing me down long enough, y'know."

She gave a half-hearted laugh. Maggie shrugged again.

"Suit yourself. I'll see you there in five minutes, then."

And she set off to catch up to the others.

Elle hurried over to the Humanities building. It was deserted, except for a few teachers sat marking at their desks - everyone had gone to lunch. That suited Elle just fine. She had only really come to drop off her textbook to avoid having to speak to anyone for a few minutes.

She did feel slightly bad for blowing Maggie off, and even worse for lying to her about it. She just needed a few minutes to herself to get her head together. It had been a mad morning, and she just felt like a minute on her own might help steady her nerves a bit.

She was lucky, really, that it had been Maggie she'd told the little lie to and not someone else. Someone like Jax, for example. She would never dream of lying to Jax. Not because she felt worse about lying to Jax than Maggie; it was just that Jax would have known straight away that she was being lied to. Jax had this insane ability to see right through to what you were really feeling. It was one of the things Elle always found most intimidating about her. No such thing as secrets when Jax was around.

But it wasn't Jax she was thinking about at that moment. It was the boy on the bike.

She trudged up the stairs to the History corridor, meandering along to Mrs Wainwright's room at the far end. The door was open. She pulled her textbook from her bag and dropped it onto the nearest table, but then for a minute she just stood there frowning.

That moment this morning had affected her, way more deeply than it should have done. It had just come so insanely out of the blue. It was like being struck by lightning.

She still remembered it vividly: the way his eyes had skimmed round, the way his gaze had fixed on hers for just a second, and the way it had felt as if a thousand synapses had suddenly fired all at once inside her brain. It was like every part of her had burst wide awake. And it was somehow all to do with that boy.

Who was he? Where had he come from? And why was it that the moment he looked at her, Elle felt as if she'd been struck by magic?

Yes, that was what it had felt like. It had felt like magic...

She turned and marched resolutely back down the corridor. Magic! She hadn't believed in magic since she was a little kid. Magic was something for only little kids and desperately gullible middle-aged women to believe in. In her head she lumped it into the same category as ghosts, fairies, dreamcatchers, healing crystals and clairvoyants. Magic, in short, was not real.

What did she think - he'd looked into her eyes and put a spell on her?

She was really losing it. She hadn't seen that guy now for more than two hours and she still couldn't get him out of her head. She needed to get her mind off it. She needed to just go and hang out with her friends for a while, and put Mystery Boy out of her mind.

She stepped out of the Humanities building, and crashed straight into the arms of Mystery Boy.