Divine Madness (10 page)

‘
Right
,’ the teacher shouted. ‘Who threw that?’

A girl sitting directly behind James put her hand up and tried to keep a straight face. ‘Miss, I think it came in through the window.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ the teacher said.

All the kids at the back of the classroom were laughing and acting rowdy and James couldn’t stand not being able to join in and have a laugh. He wanted to know about the fight, he wanted to chat up the smirking girl with incredible legs sitting behind him, but he had to shrivel into himself and be James Prince, the lonely kid. It was agony: like living in a sweet shop and only being allowed to eat sprouts.

The sweaty patches on the dude in the next seat got bigger as the lesson wore on, but he didn’t say a word. When class ended, James tapped him on the back and spoke politely.

‘Excuse me.’

He’d tapped the boy, but it was the girl who answered. ‘What is it?’ she said, breaking into a slight smile and tilting her head to one side. The mannerism made her seem motherly, and a lot older than fourteen.

‘Um, next lesson,’ James said, sounding confused. ‘It says room W-sixteen on my timetable. Do you know where that is?’

‘W means the west block,’ the girl explained. ‘Along the path to the end of the row and turn left. I’ve got a different class, but it’s on my way if you want to walk with us.’

James grinned, not a confident James Adams grin, but an uneasy James Prince grin.

‘I’m Ruth and this is my brother Adam,’ the girl said, as they walked along the sunny path between classrooms. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Sydney originally,’ James said. ‘But the last couple of years I’ve lived in London.’

‘Oh, that must have been great. You’ve really picked up their accent.’

‘Explains why he’s so pale,’ Adam said, stuttering on the P.

James didn’t think of himself as pale, but he did look pasty amongst kids who’d grown up in year-round sunshine.

As James walked alongside his two new pals, one of the lads from the back of the History class walked past and nudged him in the back.

‘Mind the freaks, new kid,’ he said.

Another simultaneously passed Ruth on the opposite side and coughed loudly. ‘
Loooooonies
,’ he chanted.

The boys jogged away, looking pleased with themselves.

‘What was that about?’ James asked innocently.

‘They mock us because of our beliefs,’ Ruth answered stiffly. ‘But we never rise to words of devils.’

The faster the mission progressed, the greater the chance that something could be done about Help Earth before their next major attack, but things couldn’t be forced. Rushing might create suspicion and slow every subsequent stage of the mission, or even destroy their chances of getting inside the Ark and penetrating the Survivors’ inner circle.

Over the following two days of school, James had a few conversations with Ruth and Adam. One time he asked a couple of questions about the commune. Ruth was happy to share knowledge and even gave him an introductory pamphlet from her backpack:
 
Ten myths and ten facts about the Survivors and their Christian lifestyle
. James took the pamphlet and studied it, but made no comment.

*

James was average height for his age, but he was naturally stocky and CHERUB’s physical training programmes had built him into a person who was obviously better not messed with. Even though he acted withdrawn, nobody had the stomach to give him any stick.

Dana got a few hassles from boys hitting on her, but she’d had years of experience at telling them where they could stick their idea of a night on the beach.

Lauren had a tougher time. There had been a mix-up about her age between CHERUB and ASIS, which had left the eleven-year-old in a first-year class with twelve- and thirteen-year-olds. By the time the mistake had been recognised, the paperwork for the Prince family’s identity had all been sorted and putting things right would have delayed the start of the mission by up to a week.

Lauren was easily clever enough to cope with the schoolwork, but having pale skin and an English accent, combined with being smaller than most of her classmates, made her a target for constant verbal bullying and earned her the name
 
Pommy Girl
.

The two main bullies were called Melanie and Chrissie. They both looked older than thirteen, with bums and breasts eager to escape their uniforms. On Friday morning, the two of them started on Lauren as she walked between the bicycle racks and her formroom. They walked behind and kept slapping her backpack, knocking her off-stride.

‘Leave off,’ Lauren said furiously.

‘Leave off,’ they mocked.

They sat in a different part of the classroom during registration, but first lesson was Maths and they sat at the next table to Lauren. As the teacher handed out marked exercise books, Lauren set out her pencil case with her maths stuff in it and put a chewy sweet in her mouth.

‘Can I have one please?’ Melanie asked, acting as if butter wouldn’t melt.

Lauren reluctantly held out the packet of sweets, but instead of taking one, Melanie snatched the lot. She took one for herself, before passing the packet on to Chrissie.

‘Hey,’ Lauren said angrily.

As Melanie gave Lauren a look as if to say,
 
what you gonna do, titch?
 
Chrissie held the sweets out to a group of boys.

‘Pommy Girl’s giving away her lollies.’

The boys grabbed the packet and passed them around until there were none left. The teacher noticed as he got back to the front of the classroom.

‘Excuse
 
me
, who gave you lot permission to eat in class?’

‘They’re Lauren’s, sir,’ Melanie said.

The teacher tutted. ‘Lauren, I know you’re new here, but kindly remember that we don’t allow eating in class.’

As soon as the teacher turned back to face the blackboard, Melanie grinned and gave Lauren the finger.

‘Bitch,’ Lauren snarled.

‘Why don’t you cry, Pommy Girl?’

‘Do you want me to punch your face in?’

Melanie laughed. ‘You’re too little. You’re not even tall enough to punch me in the tits.’

Lauren was bursting with anger. She knew she was a trained CHERUB agent and that her character, Lauren Prince, was supposed to be quiet and withdrawn, but she found it unbelievably hard putting up with this kind of abuse for hours at a time.

She tried thinking positive thoughts, like how this mission could make her one of the youngest ever black shirts if they pulled it off and how she’d be able to laugh about it with Bethany and her other mates when this was all over.

‘Earth to Lauren, can you hear me?’ the teacher asked sarcastically. ‘Stop staring at your desk and start copying this diagram off the board
 
please
.’

Lauren grabbed her pencil and began writing the title on a clean page in her exercise book. As she was halfway through drawing up pie charts from statistics written on the board, she felt a sharp pain in her upper arm. She was too shocked to make any noise as a drip of blood welled up on her skin. Melanie had stabbed her with the point of a compass.

Up to now it had just been verbals and the odd shove, but the stabbing was clearly a major escalation. Lauren contained the urge to lash out as she dabbed her blood on to a tissue.

‘Wanna make something of it, Pommy Girl?’

Lauren grinned uneasily. Her arm hurt, but she bit her lip and looked back at her exercise book.

Concentrate on the mission
.

‘Pooooommie girl,’ Melanie whispered, as she menacingly twirled the compass in her hand.

Melanie lunged forward with the compass again, but this time Lauren was ready. She sprang up, knocking her chair backwards, and grabbed Melanie’s wrist. She jerked Melanie forward, and swung a punch with her free arm. The fist landed square on Melanie’s lips with enough force to knock her sideways out of her chair and into Chrissie’s lap.

‘Satisfied now?’ Lauren said, as she bunched her fists and defied Chrissie to stand up and get a taste for herself.

Melanie’s mouth was bleeding and there were gasps and a few
holy shits
 
from her classmates. She started bawling as the teacher came charging between the desks towards them. Lauren let him push her backwards into her seat.

‘What in the name of
 
god
 
is going on?’ the teacher shouted.

‘I’m sick of her winding me up,’ Lauren screamed. ‘She’s been doing it since I got here and I’m not having it any more.’

Lauren sat back down in her plastic seat and started to sob. Part of it was put on, because you’d expect a girl in her first week at a new school to be upset when she got herself in serious trouble, but part of it was real. She’d acted out of character and was worried it might have harmed the mission.

*

The deputy headmaster looked across his desk at Lauren.

‘So, you say Melanie stabbed you with a compass and that she was bullying you, but why didn’t you come and speak to your form tutor? A violent response was entirely inappropriate.’

‘I know, sir,’ Lauren said sheepishly.

‘Melanie needed four stitches in her bottom lip. Under normal circumstances, your behaviour would have resulted in immediate suspension. However, I can see from the blood on your shirt that you were clearly provoked and I believe Melanie and Chrissie had a history of exactly this sort of unpleasantness at their previous school. I think you’ll benefit from speaking to one of our student counsellors.’

Lauren nodded.

‘OK,’ the deputy head smiled. ‘Why don’t we try to write this difficult first week off and you can make a fresh start on Monday?’

Lauren nodded. ‘Thank you sir.’

‘And, just out of curiosity, where did you learn to throw a punch like that?’

‘My dad,’ Lauren lied. ‘He was a Karate champion when he was at uni. He taught all three of us from when we were little.’

Lauren had to spend the remainder of the day sitting at a desk in a corridor outside the senior teachers’ offices. She worried what Abigail and John would say when they found out what she’d done, but the more thought she put into it, the more she suspected that it probably hadn’t caused the mission any lasting damage.

When it got to lunchtime, Lauren was allowed to go off and meet James and Dana in their usual secluded spot. She bumped into a half-dozen of her classmates, who were on her side all of a sudden.

‘That big lump totally deserved it, Lauren.’

‘Maybe you could teach me some of your moves.’

‘Little tiger,’ one of the boys grinned. ‘Come and rough me up any time, Lauren.’

The group laughed and Lauren smiled at them, but she was pretty disgusted. Not one of them had helped her when she was just the titchy new kid, but now the balance of power had shifted they wanted to suck up. She couldn’t resist eyeballing the lad who’d called her
 
little tiger
.

‘Didn’t you eat one of my sweets earlier?’

The kid looked worried. He knew an encounter with a smaller girl who packed a serious punch wasn’t going to lead anyplace good.

‘It was a joke, Lauren … You know … ? I never realised how bad those two were riding you.’

‘I tell you what, son,’ Lauren said, playing up her London accent. ‘You bring me a packet of sweets on Monday and I won’t say anything more about it, OK?’

‘Yeah,’ the kid nodded. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get them.’

As Lauren walked away, his mates were teasing him. ‘Man, I hope you forget. I want to see that little girl batter you.’

She headed for the spot where she always met James and Dana. They sat in the grass eating one of Abigail’s killer sandwiches.

‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ James grinned. ‘I heard what happened. I thought I was supposed to be the violent one in the family.’

Lauren pointed fiercely at him. ‘Shut it, James, I’m not in the mood.’

‘What did you get?’ Dana asked.

‘Nothing,’ Lauren said. ‘Except I’ve got to write an apology and stay after school to see some dumbass student counsellor.’

*

The counsellor was sixteen years old, with shoulder length blonde hair, a little on the dumpy side but you wouldn’t have called her fat. After four days at North Park, Lauren had got so that she could recognise a member of the Survivors with a glance.

There were lots of clues. Not just the shabby uniform and no-brand accessories, there was something distinctive about their body language: a bounce in their step and the appearance of being slightly happier than a kid wandering a school corridor has any right to be.

‘Hi,’ the girl said, reaching out to shake Lauren’s hand. ‘You must be Lauren Prince. I’m Mary.’