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  Chapter 5

  Amber woke up early the next morning with the significant feeling that she had had a nightmare, but didn’t have a clue what it was about. She supposed it must have been one of those dreams that disappear the moment you open your eyes, and disregarded it to get ready for school.

  She was washed, dressed and had eaten breakfast in no time, and it was only when she went to put her empty bowl in the kitchen sink that she saw the clock. It was only seven-thirty, she was usually only waking up right now, and she wouldn’t normally leave the house for at least another forty-five minutes.

  Still, Amber was ready to go, and as the buses ran every fifteen minutes from her house, she thought she’d get in early and get a head start on her History revision, of which she’d done, well, none.

  It was a whole new world at seven-thirty. The streets were quieter, the pavements were cleaner, and the only noise seemed to be the clicking of the paperboy’s bicycle wheels and the tweeting of the occasional bird. The sun gave off a different light at this time, like it wanted to welcome all those who were out and about early. Amber was only one of three on her bus, and after picking the best seat, she sat with her feet up and her head against the window for the entire journey. IT was the best start to a day she’d had in a long time.

  When she got off the bus, Amber headed straight to school, and the school library. She had never liked libraries; all those books under one roof, it just didn’t seem natural. And they smelt funny, like musty paper. But, she figured that the library would probably be the best place to fit in some Darren-free revision. Of all the people Amber had ever met, Darren was the most distracting, and annoying.

  Amber soon found that even if you think you’re in a place where you can’t possibly get distracted, something will come along and prove you wrong. For Amber, it was many things, like the birds that kept flying annoyingly loudly past the window, or the students stomping along on the plush carpet.

  She just couldn’t focus, and it didn’t help that her brain was fogged up with all her worries about what people were going to be saying this morning while she walked down the corridors, pretending to ignore them. She had heard them whispering yesterday, about the fire. From what she could tell, people were suspicious about how it had started. Hannah had mentioned something about a year eleven taking bets that it was Josh, and that he was even giving outside odds on it being Eva herself. Amber hadn’t asked what the odds were that she had started it. She knew the truth, or at least thought she did. She had put the popcorn on, told Eva to take it off the pan as she left the house, advice which Eva then ignored, and when Amber had gotten back, she’d found all the fire and smoke. Her eyes glazed over for a moment as she remembered walking in on that scene.

  If one thing was true now though, she could no longer hate Matthew Pryer. Even though he was rude and abrupt a lot of the time for no reason, she owed him her life, and was duty bound to repay him by being as nice as possible whenever she saw him, and not get angry if he acted like he always did and tried to get away as soon as possible.

  Amber sighed and got up. There was no point even trying to study, because all she was doing was sitting there thinking over her life. It may have been reflecting and poetic, but she had better stuff to do and, thanks to her wondering mind, less time to do it in.

  She walked quickly back out of the library and towards the big concrete staircase that took her to the main corridor. Just as Amber put her foot on the first step, her phone started vibrating. She pulled it out and saw a text from Will, asking her what was wrong, and telling her that he’d meet up with her after school to talk. She started keying in a reply, but she wasn’t watching where she was going, and before she knew it her foot was slipping off the step and her body was flying through the air.

  In that second, Amber knew how much it was going to hurt when her body crashed onto the sharp edge of the concrete, and a second later, she realised that the fall was delayed, she should have hit the staircase by now, and a second later, she realised the staircase was gone, replaced by green mossy grass. Maybe she was dreaming, because only in dreams did scenery change so quickly and seamlessly that you don’t realise until you look down and see a different seen streaming beneath you.

  And then Amber stopped moving.

  Her surroundings were familiar, though not the perspective, which was looking up from the ground though some branches of shrubbery. It was the school pitch, on the other side of the school grounds. Amber had gotten to the other side of the school grounds in a couple of seconds, and she didn’t even know how. She’d seen in movies that people could gain super-human abilities, but she didn’t think that covered it.

  A twig snapped behind her.

  She spun around, and saw the familiar figure of Matthew Pryer. Actually, it was Matthew Pryer’s back, which was also becoming quite familiar, as she watched him walking away.

  “What…happened?” she asked.

  Matthew stopped and turned around.

  “You fell,” he said.

  “No,” Amber breathed.

  “No you didn’t fall?” he asked.

  “Well yes, I did fall, but not here, I fell by the library, that’s at the other end of school.”

  Matthew looked at her for a moment with judging, calculating eyes.

  “You fell here,” he said.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes you did Amber, I was just getting into school and I saw you swaying, and then you fell. It was lucky I managed to catch you, you could have done some serious damage to yourself.”

  “But, I remember-“

  “I think you had low blood sugar,” he went on. “I told you to stock up on the chocolate.”

  “Matthew, I know I didn’t pass out here, I was in the library, and I was just heading back to the form room when I slipped and I fell down the stairs, and then the next thing I knew I was here, and you’re telling me all these lies about feinting and I know they aren’t true, so why are you lying?” Amber said very quietly and very quickly, without even taking a breath. She would have been impressed if Matthew managed to follow it all.

  “I have to go Amber,” he said. “I have to get to class, but I think you should go to the nurse and get yourself checked up, there’s obviously something wrong. Maybe you hit your head when you got out of the fire the other day.”

  He walked past her and off towards the Art block, leaving Amber to pick herself up and brush the dirt off her skirt, which had now got a tear at the bottom of it.

  That was twice Matthew Pryer had saved her now, even though he wouldn’t admit to what really happened. A tiny part of Amber’s mind, the part at the back that nagged away at her, was afraid that what he was saying was true, and that she had something wrong with her and was seeing things that weren’t really there. Thankfully, this was the part if her brain Amber never listened to. The other part was telling her to find a way to prove to herself, and to Matthew if he continued to be so stubborn, that she was right and he was wrong, and she would do it.

  Amber was late for art class, but she managed to sneak in while Mr Grady’s back was turned into a seat beside Hannah, so she avoided a detention.

  “Hi,” Hannah whispered. “How are you?”

  “I’m…better,” Amber murmured back. “Things are getting better.”

  “What happened to your skirt?”

  Amber sighed.

  She told Hannah that she had fallen, which was true even if Matthew Pryer’s version of events was correct. She left out any mention of him. Even if she did say about Matthew being there, she didn’t know what she could say. If she told what she thought was the truth, Hannah would think she had some sort of mental illness, and if she told her Matthew’s version of events, Hannah would think she had some sort of mental illness. It was what Will would call a lose-lose situation.

  Mr Grady set them all off to work, but as it didn’t take much concentration to draw an apple, the whole class was able to talk freely. Darren came up to th
eir desk under the pretence of getting a pencil.

  “Hey, Amber?” he asked.

  “Hmmm?” was Amber’s response. She made a note that if Matthew Pryer ever started saying she had some strange mental illness, she would have to start talking with real words.

  “Well, I wanted to ask…I was just…” he started. “I’m going into town tomorrow and I was wondering if you wanted-“

  “Hi,” Matthew swept in. Though he probably didn’t realise it, that was the third time he’d saved Amber. He was becoming quite useful actually.

  Darren tried to lean around him to speak to her, but every movement he made was mirrored so perfectly that there might as well have been a wall between them. Eventually Darren gave up and went to stand by one of his other friends, who Amber thought was called Jake.

  “Thanks for that,” she said sourly to Matthew. Though she knew she owed him, she couldn’t help but be a little annoyed, and in all fairness, he had called her senile. And he had swanned off without her earlier, again.

  “Come on, relax,” he stretched and leant against the desk with one hand.

  “If you think you’re coming over here for the good conversation, you’re wrong because I’m not planning on talking to you,” said Amber.

  “Ok firstly, you just did,” Matthew stated. “And secondly, I saved your life-you’re welcome by the way.”

  “So you admit it,” said Amber quickly, sweeping in on the gap she saw.

  “Admit what?”

  “That you did something this morning when I fell down the library stairs.”

  “Actually, I was referring to the fire, and event that actually happened-“

  “Me falling down the staircase happened!” she cut in loudly. A few people nearby looked at her strangely. She was becoming paranoid that a rumour questioning her sanity would be all too believable.

  “Amber, I told you, it didn’t,” he said in a convincingly worried voice.

  “Why are you lying?” Amber asked frankly.

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  “Why would I lie?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, you tell me seeing as it’s you who’s doing it.”

  “Amber, just drop it,” he said and went back to his own desk. And for once, because of the tone in his voice as he had said it, Amber did as she was told.

  Next thing anyone knew, the bell was ringing and it was lunchtime, with another two lessons blown away in what seemed like no time.

  Amber picked up a sandwich and a bottle of water, and went to join Eva at her table. Eva had seemed distant since the fire, and Amber thought it had affected her more than it had affected herself, but she still always sat with Eva at lunch, as did lots people, though most only did it because they thought it would make them more popular.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” asked a girl called Katy as Amber picked at her sandwich. She hadn’t really talked to this girl much, but everyone else seemed to like her. She wore a velvet green ribbon in her long black hair; the shade of the ribbon matched her sparkling oblique eyes.

  “Not really,” Amber told her. She hadn’t had much of an appetite all day since her run in with Matthew Pryer. The worst part was that Matthew’s version of the story made so much more sense than what she saw, or what she thought she saw.

  The people around the table sat and chatted about homework, and an English essay she’d already completed. Amber sat quietly and drank her water.

  Sports was next. Amber liked sports, she did, but she was terrible at it, and because she was so bad at it, it meant that she spent the whole hour feeling self-conscious that whatever she was doing she was doing wrong, or that she was about to give the ball away stupidly, or that the PE teacher was watching everything she was doing. She dragged her feet half-heartedly towards the changing rooms. It was raining again.

  “Good afternoon everyone,” called Coach Fisher, a rather ferocious looking woman with a wide forehead thin lips, once the class had gathered.

  “Good afternoon, Coach Fisher,” echoes the class. They sounded about as enthusiastic as Amber felt.

  “Ok, so today girls have hockey out on the pitch with me. The boys are in the sports hall for basketball.” Amber had never been in a separated sports class before; in her old school, there hadn’t been enough people to make up two classes for anything. To her it didn’t really make sense to split up the lesson based on gender, seen as people were always complaining about equality among the sexes and everything.

  “Let’s go!” Coach Fisher shouted.

  Amber lifted a hockey stick and headed onto the pitch with Eva, who was little miss sporty with her hair tied up in a ponytail, all ready to go.

  When they got out on the pitch, Coach Fisher decided it would be a good idea to put Amber as team captain, seen as she’d never seen her play before. Amber did not like this idea, and seemingly neither did Eva, who had gotten used to being team captain.

  Amber was forced to take the first centre pass, which was one of the few things she was actually capable of, because she only had to hit the ball about a meter to Eva, who was waiting, stick held ready. The moment Coach Fisher blew the whistle, Amber slapped the ball with her hockey stick, and ran backwards to the side of the pitch, where she wouldn’t have to be passed to, and wouldn’t have to defend against anyone. She wouldn’t usually have minded attempting to join in the game, but people at this school seemed to be so much more competitive than she was used to.

  “Get the ball Amber!” Coach Fisher shouted from across the field. Coach Fisher was the kind of woman who you did not want to object to, for fear of your own life, so Amber jogged downfield towards a larger crowd of players.

  Spits of rain was starting for fall on the game, and Amber’s boots squelched in the mud as she moved about, trying to look like she was watching for the ball. Somewhere out in the distance, a peal of thunder echoed.

  That was when Amber stopped. It wasn’t because the thunder scared her, or because she was too tired and muddy to move any further; at the edge of the pitch, half hidden by the large thick-leafed shrubbery, was a girl Amber did not recognise. Her face was ghostly pale, white like snow, but it did not shine in the way snow did. She couldn’t be much older than Amber, and was definitely no taller. Her most defining feature was her black hair, which was so dark it seemed to absorb the light around it, and caused this girl’s face to appear even paler. It was strange, usually she would have given this figure a glance and moved on with the game, but this girl held her stare, and Amber found herself incapable of breaking away. Anything could be happening in the game, and she wouldn’t even be aware of it.

  And even though Amber definitely did not know this girl, this girl seemed to know Amber, with the gut-wrenching stares she was giving her, that made Amber feel like a small, very powerless child. Not once in all this time had the girl moved, not even to blink her midnight eyes, or twitch her pale hand. She just stood there, motionless, staring at Amber. But there was something about this girl, something recognisable, something that reminded Amber very much of-

  “Amber, LOOK OUT!”

  Thud.

  The next thing she was aware of was the fuzzy vision of half a dozen pairs of eyes staring down at her, and a voice that sounded very distant shouting, “Make way, let me through-move Casey.”

  Things went very dark again.

  Amber woke up little over an hour later in the dingy nurse’s office feeling like a small elephant was standing on her head, and every movement Amber made appeared to cause that Amber to take several, crashing footsteps that resounded around her brain.

  When she saw her trying to sit up, the silver-haired Nurse Genete came bustling over with a large glass of water and a box of pink tablets.

  “Take on of these,” she said, hand Amber the tablets and the water. “It should help any pain you may have.”

  “Thanks,” Amber said. It sounded as though she was speaking through a megaphone, underwater, wearing a snorkel. The elepha
nt in Amber’s head pounded harder.

  “What…happened?” she asked confusedly.

  The whole day was fuzzy; Amber couldn’t even remember what she’d had for breakfast.

  “You were hit in the head by a hockey ball,” said the nurse. “I don’t know what they teach you these days, when I was at school, we all had good reactions-if a hockey ball came flying at our heads, we ducked. Be sure to drink the water, dear.”

  Amber took one large sip of the icy water. “Also, you’re going to be getting a bad headache for a while, so when you get home take some painkillers, or you’re going to be hurting a lot.”

  “When can I go home?” Amber asked, looking at the big clock above the door. It was only fifteen minutes until final bell.

  “Well, how do you feel?” asked the nurse. She had a kind, smiling face. Amber assessed the thumping in her head, and tried to tilt it from side to side, which gave her brief spells of dizziness. She disregarded it; she didn’t want to spend all afternoon in the nurse’s office.

  “I’m fine,” she lied, hoping to get out of school early so she could avoid the rushing crowds when the bell rang.

  “Well, as long as you feel alright I’ll let you go when you finish off your water. Just be absolutely certain to take some aspirin before you go to bed.”

  Nurse Genete stood up and walked to her desk, from which she picked up a crisp piece of paper, which she handed to Amber.

  “I need you to ask your mother to sign this, it’s just to let her know what happened, and that you should be taken to hospital if you show any signs of concussion.”

  “Concussion?” Amber echoed.

  “Don’t worry, it’s only a precaution, you’ll be fine,” said the woman, helping Amber up off the sinking bed.

  “Thank you,” Amber said, using the table as a support to stand up, stumbled towards a white door.

  “Oh, dear, that’s thee store cupboard,” said the nurse.

  “Oh, right,” Amber said, and turned back around to the correct door, which was actually painted blue. She thought she should have noticed the colour change.

  Despite the ten-minute head start she got on everyone else, Amber still scarcely made it to the bus before it pulled off. She had lost about eight minutes staggering around in the corridors and pausing to take breathes. Everything seemed to take longer when she couldn’t walk in a straight line.

  “Hi,” she said to Hannah, who jumped at her friend’s sudden appearance.

  “Hi,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m-“ Amber, who had been sidestepping into her place, came over dizzy and fell onto the seat.

  “Woah,” Hannah said. “That ball must have hit you really hard.”

  “Whoever hit it must be really strong,” Amber muttered, clutching her head, which was pounding yet again.

  “Well actually…it was me who hit it,” Hannah admitted awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to,” she gushed. “I was aiming for the goal, and I thought it was going to go in but then it was just like it turned around and headed for you, and you didn’t look like you were paying attention, and everyone was shouting but you must not have heard because you didn’t turn around, and it smacked into the side of your head. If you had been paying attention, it wouldn’t have hit you-sorry, that came out wrong. What were you looking at?”

  “I…don’t remember,” Amber said. “Something in the bush, a cat maybe? Or a rabbit?”

  “An animal?” Hannah asked loudly. The old woman opposite them looked around. “Sorry,” Hannah whispered to her, and continued. “You let the ball hit you because you were too busy looking at an animal?”

  “I said it could have been an animal, I don’t know what I was doing. It’s too late now anyway, the damage is done,” Amber said, just as the bus turned up her street. “Anyway, I’ll see you later.”

  “Bye,” said Hannah as the other girl climbed precariously out of her seat and walked unsteadily to the doors.

  The wind was really starting to blow outside, and Amber thought it looked like there was going to be a thunderstorm tonight. Just as the words crossed her mind, it started to spit with rain. She sighed and unzipped her schoolbag to extract her black raincoat. It wasn’t easy to get it out from the mess of books, at the same time as holding her bag so it didn’t get muddy on the ground. She finally managed to get the coat clear out, but her grip on it wasn’t very tight. Big mistake. A sudden gust of wind howled down the street and ripped the coat from her hand. So now Amber had a saw head, damaged pride, and no coat. And it was raining buckets.

  She hunched her shoulders and ran as quickly as she cold without causing herself more pain in the direction of her house.

  Before Amber could cross the road far enough to see her front door however, a familiar face smiled to her from the pavement and beckoned her over. It was Will.

  “What’s wrong with you?” was the first thing he said.

  “A hockey ball hit me in the head,” Amber mumbled. “It hurt.”

  For a split second, she thought she saw a tint of anger in Will’s eyes, but then he smiled sympathetically and said, “Yeah, it probably would have been a good idea to duck when you saw a great heavy ball sailing towards you.”

  “I didn’t see it. I wasn’t watching.”

  “Valuable life lesson,” he said cheerfully. “Never turn your back on your opponent.”

  “Well aren’t you insightful,” Amber said sardonically.

  “Well, I didn’t let a hockey ball give me a concussion, so I think I have a right to be insightful.”

  “Oh, I forgot to apologise for standing you up the other day, I have a really good reason, I promise-“

  “You were recovering from being in a house fire, which you seem to have done very well by the way.”

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “Well, I would say something cute like we’re just so in tune I can tell what you’re thinking, but actually I think everyone in a ten mile radius knows about you surviving that fire to be honest. So you’re forgiven.”

  “Thank you,” said Amber.

  “So, I was going to ask you if you wanted to go and get something to eat, but you look like you might pass out, so why don’t we just go and get you an ice pack for your head instead?” he asked, and took Amber’s school bag for her.

  “That sounds like a very good idea,” she said, and continued to stagger down the street with the support of Will’s shoulder.

  “So you and Matthew are friends now?” he asked about an hour later, after Amber had explained the days going on.

  “No,” she said after thinking about it for a minute.

  “I would have thought you owed him; he did kind of save your life.”

  “Yes, but then he implied that I was ever so slightly losing my mind, so we aren’t friends any more,” she said stubbornly.

  “I’m sure you’ll forgive him,” Will said, with the manner of explaining something very simple to a very problematic child.

  “Only if he says sorry first.”

  “And you really think you fell down the stairs?”

  “Yes Will,” she said. “I got your text and then I was sending a reply and I slipped. Then, I don’t know, Matthew Pryer must have caught me. I don’t know how I ended up at the other end of school, but I know that I did. You do believe me, don’t you?”

  Will looked at her with his kind eyes for a moment.

  “Yes, I believe you,” he sighed. “You’re day must have really sucked.”

  “Well, I’ve fallen down a big flight of stairs, got a concussion from a hockey ball, and now I’ve got no coat. They say bad things happen in threes, so I’m hoping I’ll be alright now.”