School Monitor Page 3

  “I don’t care who he is!” I have her back without being punched, but I’m still mad.

  “You’re jealous!”

  Her laughing just makes the fires inside burn even more.

  “Oh, Rich, don’t be like that!” Kissing me on the cheek, she continues to giggle in my ear. “You’ve got nothing to get upset about.”

  “You were all over him!”

  “Only to make you jealous,” she tells me as she starts to play with my hair.

  “Well, congratulations, you succeeded!” I hate feeling like this, wanting her and at the same time, wanting to push her away because she’s making a right fool of me.

  “Rich, Steve’s more likely to fancy you!”

  “I don’t care!”

  “Please, Rich?”

  I swallow as her lips brush mine.

  “Kiss and make up?”

  I can’t say no; the anger dissolves, and suddenly nothing else matters. Smiling, I kiss her, just like before. Only this time we have an audience, as Dave and Stew laugh and whoop.

  This morning everything was hopeless. I was terrified what would happen to Chrissie when we went to St. Bart’s, and thanks to Beth, she’ll fit in no problem, and as for me — well, like the hero in any film, I got the girl.

  Chapter 6

  Someone’s pressed the fast forward button on my life. One moment I am making out with Beth in her top field, the next I’m seconds away from being cut off from the outside world as the limo turns down some sorry excuse for a road, flanked on either side by an endless desert of sorry-looking bracken and shrubs.

  Ten miles or more behind us was Brockwater Village, which I almost missed when I lost the connection to Beth, marking the last post of civilisation. This would make a great location if I ever wanted to make a zombie movie, just not the place I want to spend the next year of my life. I groan as my signal disappears again and turn to Chrissie.

  “All right?”

  “Like you care,” she grumbles.

  “What have I done now?” She’s been in a right mood ever since we left.

  She doesn’t say anything, just glares at me, and now she dresses like the queen bee in one of those lame chick flicks, it’s kind of intimidating.

  “Look, this is stupid,” I concede as the driver slows to join a long line of black limos, Range Rovers, Jaguars, and several Lamborghinis. “I don’t want to be fighting with you when I’ve got to try to get along with a group of guys I don’t know.”

  “Well, you should have thought of that before you ignored me the entire drive here!” she retorts. “You promised me you’d look after me.”

  “Give me a break.” I sigh. “I’m not going to see Beth for ages — you and I are going to be together twenty-four, seven.”

  “Until you ditch me for all your new friends.”

  “That’s not going to happen.” I groan, kind of forgetting what I was going to say when I get my first glimpse of the school, some monstrosity of a stately home, standing guard amongst a vast estate of emerald lawns, majestic trees, and more than one tennis court from what I can make out. “Anyway, the way you look now, you’re more likely to be the one doing the ditching.”

  “Like that’s going to happen.”

  This time I decide to ignore the attitude. “Just do what I told you to, and everything will be cool, and remember, don’t tell anyone I make films.”

  “You’re being really dumb about this.”

  “Whatever.” I sigh, checking to see if I have a signal so I can call Beth one last time. I don’t. “But this isn’t going to be like our old school, and until I can figure them out, I don’t want them knowing—”

  “You dress up like a girl for laughs,” she says, flashing me a caustic smile.

  “Glad you finally understand,” I say, matching her sarcasm as we draw even nearer to the huge dark-grey stone building. Whoever decided to turn this place into a school had a definite fetish for classic B horror movies.

  Deciding not to try to speak to Chrissie until she had enough of ignoring me, I continue to check out the school. According to the prospectus, this is a Tudor manor house, and there is currently a collection to repair the bell tower. If there is a collection to install Wi-Fi or behead a few vomiting gargoyles that have procreated over most of the turrets — I might donate.

  The car crunches to a stop alongside two identical limos, where a couple of seriously hot girls, who have to be sixth formers, gracefully exit from the backseat, both wearing barely there LBDs and carrying identical black Chanel handbags. I turn to Chrissie; if she blows this audition, we’re going to have the term from Hell, but she’s still ignoring me. Stomach tense, I get out the car and join the organised chaos of an extravagant red-carpet event.

  Around the perimeter of the car park, LV, Fendi, Gucci, and all manner of designer-branded luggage is piled onto an ever-moving train of trollies, which are being pushed into a side door by some rather pompous men, all wearing pristine black suits, top hats, and purple-and-gold neckties.

  Everyone here from year seven to thirteen are a walking advert for the high-end fashion houses, and barely taking notice of Chrissie and me, some air kiss or exchange fake pleasantries before joining the queue of students all making their way into the opulent marble entrance. I swallow as I sense Chrissie move alongside me. This is going to be my biggest acting challenge to date.

  “Just the six bags?” asks a man’s voice, and turning away from the approaching Bentley complete with flags, I find one of the porters is speaking to me.

  “What?”

  “Is it just the six bags here you wish taken to your dorm?” he repeats in the same bored tones.

  “Er, no.” I really should have rehearsed this more, and with the absence of information online my only references on how to behave in these situations are some dubious period dramas and Harry Potter. “Those three are my sister’s. I’ll take this one.” I grab my camera bag and sling it over my shoulder.

  “I trust you’ve taken out all iPads, mobile devices, and other electrical equipment that has external connectivity?”

  I nod and pat my camera bag. “It’s all in here.”

  “I hope for your sake it is,” he tells me. “Now move along to registration.”

  I follow where he’s pointing and join the queue of girls and boys spilling out of the main entrance doors. Chrissie still refuses to acknowledge my existence, despite clinging to me like a shadow. I stand there for a bit, get out my mobile, find there’s still no signal, smile at a couple of the girls who are checking me out, look to see if I’ve got a signal again, and am just about to repeat the process when a relatively normal guy about my age in jeans and a nondescript grey sweatshirt slots in behind us.

  “You new?” He looks normal enough, but his accent wouldn’t sound out of place in Downton Abbey (and I’m not talking the servant’s quarters).

  Relieved, I turn to him and nod. “Is it that obvious?”

  His long, freckled face breaks into a reassuring grin. “Very obvious. I’m Jones, by the way.”

  I shake his hand, liking him straight away. “I’m Rich, and this is my sister, Chrissie.”

  Chrissie, who’s still in a mega-strop, flashes a quick smile and goes back to ignoring me by playing a game on her mobile.

  “We don’t use first names here,” he says, pushing his floppy brown fringe out of his eyes. “Which is good, really; my dad had a sense of humour failure when he decided to call me Rupert. That’s my brother Oscar over there. He’s Head Boy — you call him Bollinger.”

  He points to a tall guy with slightly darker hair that obscures most of his face, and looks far too cool to be at school, despite the fact he’s wearing what appears to be a woollen kimono paired with distressed skinny jeans. I should have guessed as soon as he said his name was Rupert, he had a double-barrelled surname.

  “All right, Jarvis?” I nudge Chrissie, but she’s still in strop-mode.

  “Girls use their first name,” Jones explains, polite
ly ignoring the fact Chrissie is blanking me. “St. Bart’s was boys only until a couple of years ago, so a lot of the traditions don’t apply to them.”

  “Does that mean I get to keep my mobile?” Chrissie enquires.

  “No, and don’t even think about trying to smuggle one in; you don’t want to get caught breaking any of the rules — especially The Code.” If I was filming this, I would have dimmed the lights and under-lit him with a spotlight when he said The Code.

  “I don’t get it.” I read all about this Code in the prospectus, and I could have explained it in a lot less than the three pages they took. “If you steal something, you get in trouble or expelled. Seems reasonable enough.”

  “There’s a bit more to it,” he says, checking over his shoulder as if to see we’re not being overheard. “Break The Code, and even the masters won’t help you out.”

  “Yeah, right,” I snort, but to my surprise, Jones is still serious.

  “I’m not joking,” he says, his fear somehow managing to entice Chrissie out of mega-strop mode. “In my first year, Stilton, this year twelve, hung himself in the bell tower after he stole a master’s mobile. He’d been put in solitary for his own protection because…”

  I follow his gaze and see a huge man with silver hair and black flowing robes striding past.

  “That’s the Head,” Jones explains, speaking in normal tones again.

  The Head could pass for Count Dracula, but I decide to keep my comments to myself. “You were saying about Stilton, was it?”

  “Oh, that.” He shrugs. “Well, you learn to take the rules seriously here. That’s why all the cameras were installed.”

  For the first time, I notice all the security cameras positioned above the doors and stairwells, and I don’t know why, but knowing they film us makes me shiver.

  We chat some more as the queue moves slowly forward, while Rupert — I mean Jones — points out other guys from our year.

  “It isn’t that bad,” Jones continues as we near our turn to sign in. “School has a pretty good polo squad, and most weekends there’s archery and shooting. Do you play?”

  “Polo?” I shake my head. “I signed up for rugby.”

  “Bad mistake,” he tells me. “Especially if you’re any good. You any good?”

  “I played for my last school…” I trail off as he winces. “Why?”

  He winces again but refrains from saying anything else as the roar of a helicopter comes in to land, drowning out everything. I knew even before Jones told me, the boy exiting the helicopter was Robert Spencer, the son of Dad’s new boss. Dressed casually in a black suit and white t-shirt with dark shades and neat black hair, he moves with A-list confidence towards the school as the porters race to retrieve the five Louis Vuitton trunks. Talk about making an entrance. I almost feel compelled to ask for his autograph when he takes his place alongside Jones.

  Comfortable as anything, the two of them knock knuckles before he shows me a really awful photo of me on his iPhone. “You’re Jarvis, then.”

  I nod, noticing he’s a couple of inches taller than I am and has a lot more muscles on his tanned arms.

  “And I take it this must be Chrissie.” He removes his shades and turns on the charm to full leading-actor beam. “If your father had sent over a photo of you, I might have invited you both over before term started.”

  I freeze as I wait to see how Chrissie’s going to react to this; if she doesn’t play it cool and goes running off — this is it. Game over. But she’s still in mega-strop mode, and rolling her eyes, returns to her game. Fortunately, being blown off (something I doubt Spencer ever experiences, because even without billionaire status, he’s leading-man material), seems to amuse him, and he continues to grace us with his presence.

  “You don’t look much like twins,” he muses, turning to me.

  I know I’ve been told to suck up to him, but if I don’t stand up to him now, he’ll think I’m a pushover. “Well, we wouldn’t, would we? She’s a girl.”

  To my relief, he laughs. “I think I’m going to like you, Jarvis, but not as much as your sister.”

  I know he doesn’t mean it. Behind all that smugness, he’s just playing with her, but Chrissie continues to add him to the list of people she’s decided to blank — which still includes me.

  “So, who’s your dorm master?” Spencer asks me, continuing to check Chrissie out.

  “Parker.”

  “Same as us,” he says, sticking out his foot and sending a small, skinny boy with glasses sprawling forward. “Watch it, Hermit!”

  I laugh, only because I don’t want to end up like the skinny boy who’s picking himself up off the tiles, and Chrissie — well, I’m not sure she even noticed.

  “He’s a right loser!” Spencer continues, sounding almost bored. “Isn’t that right, Jones?”

  Jones feigns a grin, but he’s not a good enough actor to hide the unease, which makes him chew on his bottom lip.

  “Still, he has his uses,” Spencer continues.

  “He does?” I turn round to see Hermit, if that’s his name, scrambling to pick up his bags before scuttling up the stairs, presumably to the dorms, where the teachers can offer him some protection.

  “Yes, do you want to do your own laundry?”

  I shrug, telling myself if I don’t go along with this, me and Chrissie are going to be the ones getting shoved about. “I thought that’s what the girls were for.”

  He laughs, and Chrissie looks up from her mobile just long enough to glare at me, which is the only reason why I said it; if she doesn’t start acting normal soon, Hermit won’t be the only one getting a hard time.

  “Better get ready,” Jones tells me, powering off his mobile and dropping it into a small black case. “You need to check in everything that can get a signal.”

  “And they really don’t give them back to us at weekends?” I ask as Spencer slips his mobile into an LV briefcase.

  “Afraid not,” Jones tells me. “And don’t forget your smartwatch too.”

  Wishing I’d been more prepared, I stuff it in my camera bag and hope I can survive without my playlists until the first exeat weekend.

  “You can rent mobiles in the village,” Jones says. “And there’s an Internet café too.”

  “How much?”

  “Pound a minute.”

  I feel my shoulders sag. I’m going to be broke forever on the allowance Dad’s given me.

  “What’s the problem?” Spencer asks me as we reach the row of tables where the masters are collecting all the banned goods. “Just get some more money out on your credit card.”

  Mr Wilson, history teacher, signs me in. He tells me to call him sir. “You call everyone sir here,” he explains, so I guess I won’t have any difficulty remembering names. He takes out his clipboard and writes mine on the top of a form, forcing me to look at the top of his bald head as he ticks off all the items in my bag against a long list of contraband goods.

  “Any other wireless communicators?” he asks, writing down my mobile number at the top of the page.

  “No, sir,” I reply, checking to see if Chrissie is okay. She is; one of the girl prefects is looking after her.

  “Digital photo frame?”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t connect to the web.”

  “Hand it over!”

  Groaning, I open up my bag and pull it out, along with half a ton of sweets and crisps I bought in case the food sucks here.

  “Did you read the joining instructions, Jarvis?” he bellows, ensuring everyone looks at me.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, read them again,” he says, holding out a booklet. “And memorise them this time!”

  “Yes, sir,” I say, with a hint of sarcasm, just to show I’m not scared.

  “You being insolent, Jarvis?”

  “Me, sir?” I pull my innocent face, the one I used to get the part of Oliver. “No, sir.”

  “Good, now hand your bag over. I don’t have time for twenty questions
.”

  I groan again as I flick through the rulebook. I don’t believe half this stuff; it’s as if I’ve been sent to one of those sadistic schools Charles Dickens wrote about.

  “What’s this?”

  “Dictaphone, sir.” I switch it on. This was my best buy ever from Japan and looks like a futuristic lighter. The sound quality even at distance is studio quality. “I use it for recording useful sounds — do you want to test it out?”

  He doesn’t want to test it. He now wants to know what my camcorder is. “And this?”

  “It’s a high-definition digital camcorder, sir,” I say, not holding back the sarcasm this time, because I’ve had enough of him talking to me as if I’m a moron.

  “Well,” he tells me with a nasty smile, “you can wave goodbye to your high-definition digital camcorder because it’s not allowed!”

  “You can’t do that!”

  It isn’t until I see the way Spencer and Jones look at me in the dead silence that gobbles up the entrance hall that I realise I have committed a crime of the millennium by St. Bart’s standards. Along with everyone else, they are frozen rigid in surreal terror, but I have no idea why they’re so freaked.

  “I need it for my studies!” I say through gritted teeth.

  “I’ll decide what you do and do not need, Jarvis!” Wilson growls, sticking his face in mine. “And you don’t need this.”

  This would never have happened at my old school, and my mouth is open, ready to ask him how I’m supposed to do media studies with no camera, when Jones elbows me out of the way.

  “Jarvis is really sorry, sir,” says Jones, looking as terrified as if Wilson had a gun pointed at him. “I’ll make sure he knows—”

  But Wilson refuses to let Jones finish. “If I were you, Jones, I’d keep your mouth shut. You’re still on probation after that stunt you pulled last term.”

  “But he’s new and doesn’t know the rules—”

  Once again, Wilson refuses to let Jones finish, only this time it hits me what deep trouble I’m in when, without warning, Wilson rises to his feet and in one swift movement grabs Jones by the scruff of the collar.

  “One more word out of you, and you can kiss goodbye to all privileges for the rest of the year,” he warns Jones in a nasty voice. “Do I make myself clear?”

  Jones attempts to nod but can’t. “Sorry, sir.”

  Wilson grunts and, satisfied, releases Jones. “Anything you want to add, Jarvis?”