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  Two seconds later, the video fills with her smiling face, and I’m grinning again; she’s just so pretty.

  “Hi,” she says, waving; the connection is so slow that when she moves, she’s all blurred and jagged. “Look who’s here!”

  Stew and Dave squeeze into view and wave. “Love the uniform!” Stew smirks. “You look like a right nob.”

  “Thanks!”

  Finny barges in front of me to check Beth out and lets out a long whistle; I have to use both hands to shove him out of the way.

  Beth giggles. “Who’s he?”

  “Finny — he’s our tighthead prop.”

  “A what?”

  “He leads the push forward,” I explain. “I’ve got my first match this afternoon.”

  “Whatever,” says Beth. “Anyway, we’ve got loads to tell you…”

  The hour goes too quickly, and the next time Finny leans over to check Beth out, it’s time to leave. I say bye to them, make my booking for next week, and head back to the bus with Finny.

  “Spencer and your sister seem to be hitting it off.”

  I look round to see Spencer and Chrissie walking hand in hand towards the duck pond — the make-out area.

  “Oi, Spence!” yells Finny. “Want to come and watch us annihilate Litchfield?”

  Spencer shakes his head. “Got better things to do than see you get your pathetic arses kicked.”

  Finny laughs and gives him the finger.

  “By the time Litchfield finishes with you, that’s about the only thing you’ll be able to do!” Spencer warns him, all smug smiles.

  As they continue to trade insults, I wave at Chrissie, trying to put things right between us, but she’s still having none of it and just stands there, arms folded, glaring at me in her skinny jeans and long black leather coat.

  Chapter 14

  We didn’t just beat Litchfield; we slaughtered them. Litchfield hasn’t been beaten at home in five years, and I got the try and conversion that won us the match. I am a rugby god!

  As we drive away from the broken Litchfield team, now wearing their black and red scarves in shame, Baxter leads us all in another rendition of “Lose Yourself” by Eminem, with some special rap lyrics Finny composed about Litchfield.

  “Litchfield, last year’s northern counties champions, went crashing out of the cup.” Posing as a sport’s reporter, Finny takes centre aisle to a roar of stamping feet and whooping. “And I’m here with man of the match, St. Bart’s new signing — Richard Jarvis!”

  More cheers and foot stamping, and because I can’t help it, the entertainer in me takes a bow.

  “That was one awesome try,” Finny tells me, holding out the invisible microphone. “What was going through your mind when you picked up the stray ball?”

  I pretend to take the invisible microphone, and clear my throat. “Well, Finny,” I say, far more comfortable playing to the crowd than I am playing rugby. “I ran hard and fast because I didn’t want to get crushed by their back line. But seriously, I knew I was holding the hope of St. Bart’s in my arms, so I put my head down and charged!”

  “Is that your signature move — headbutting the opposition?”

  “I’ll take them down any way I can!”

  They all cheer and stamp their feet even more, and as the coach speeds along the country lanes back to St. Bart’s we sing another chorus of “Lose Yourself,” before Parker tells us to keep the noise down because he’s got an important call.

  St. Bart’s looks like it’s been wrapped up as a Christmas present: there isn’t one window, vomiting gargoyle, or doorway that isn’t draped with purple-and-yellow scarves, paper chains, and home-painted banners. Like conquering heroes, we’re carried shoulder high over a roar of applause and cheers, and there waiting for us is our victory prize of pizza, Coke, chocolate, and music in the Main Hall!

  I munch my way through five slices of pepperoni to a captive audience while some hot year-ten girls give me the eye. Everyone’s having a great time — everyone, that is, except Chrissie, who has taken to sulking in the corner. I watch as Spencer tries to talk to her, but she sends him away too before going back to staring at the floor.

  Jones deals another round of cards. Having been in boarding school all his life, he seems to know every board and card game that was ever invented.

  “Concentrate!” complains Finny, who has a real competitive streak when it comes to any kind of game. “You’ve just made fifteen, you get two points.”

  I move my peg up two more holes in the wooden board and try to get back into the game, but I can’t; this thing with Chrissie is really getting to me, and I don’t care what Beth says. I’d rather be a mug running after Chrissie than feel this rotten.

  “Jarvis!” Finny cries, waking me from the turmoil of my inner thoughts. “Move your peg.”

  Still trying to get my head around cribbage, which isn’t easy even if I didn’t have the stress of falling out with my twin, I move the red peg up two more holes.

  “Jarvis!” I jump as Jones elbows me in the ribs. “You only get one if you can’t make thirty-one.”

  I move the peg back a hole. I should sit with her. Everything I am tells me to, but I don’t; I’m listening to Beth and the others, who keep telling me she needs to make her own friends and if I keep stepping in, I’m always going to be stepping in.

  Baxter lays a nine of spades and Jones a four of clubs, taking the total score to twenty-eight. If Finny lays a three, he’s won; if he doesn’t, I do. For some reason, this game is all about fifteens and thirty-ones.

  Finny taps the table with the edge of his cards. “Pass.”

  I check my hand; I have a three of diamonds, and I lay it.

  “Bastard!” Finny hisses, hurling a chocolate bar at me. “That’s three games straight you’ve won! You’re a card-shark, that’s why you keep winning — it’s all an act.”

  “I’ve never played this before in my life,” I tell him, clueless how Finny can be so wound up over a stupid game of cards.

  “So how come you keep winning?” Finny demands as he shuffles the cards again.

  “Beginner’s luck?” I offer, putting the chocolate bar aside because if I eat one more thing I’m going to puke.

  “Don’t believe him,” Jones says with a grin, just so I know he’s winding Finny up even more. “Jarvis here is an accomplished actor.”

  Baxter snorts back a laugh. “As long as today’s try wasn’t beginner’s luck, I don’t care how many games of cards Jarvis takes us for. The only thing I care about is winning the Challenge Cup.”

  Finny nods. “We were bloody good.”

  “Bloody genius,” Baxter agrees, leading the toast. “To Jarvis and the Challenge Cup!”

  “The Challenge Cup!”

  We bang Coke cans, wishing they were beer, and when I look over my shoulder to check how Chrissie’s doing, I find she’s gone.

  Chapter 15

  When Parker goes outside for a smoke, Bollinger turns up the music, and the party really begins. Shaking my head as Poppy tries to get me to show her how to dance Gangnam Style, I go back to showing Finny how my camera works; he wants to be part of the Quasi production, and his acting sucks big time.

  “It’s all blurry,” he complains again, examining the footage in the viewfinder of Jones and Poppy making out. “Is it working?”

  “Just put it on manual focus,” I tell him.

  “You told me not to!”

  “That’s before I realised how useless you were,” I joke, resetting everything for him. “Now try.”

  Balancing it on his shoulder, he goes off to film Baxter and Spencer, who are larking about with Bollinger and some girls near the stage, but I’m not on my own for long; for the first time in almost a week, Chrissie comes over to talk to me.

  “Hi, Rich.”

  “Hi, yourself,” I say, just relieved we’re talking again. “How’s things?”

  She shrugs and sits down next to me. “Okay. You got a minute?”

&
nbsp; “Sure, what’s up?”

  She shakes her head and sniffs back invisible tears.

  “What’s happened?” I ask, suddenly feeling guilty for not making more of an effort to patch things up.

  She turns away like I do when I’m scared I’m going to cry and I don’t want anyone to see me.

  “Chrissie?”

  “I’ve done something really stupid…” she finally tells me, her face this horrible white colour.

  “What?” My heart lurches, but before she gets the chance to tell me what it is, Fiona Huntington-Baxley, or whatever her double-barrelled surname is, marches over to me.

  “At last,” she says. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you all night!”

  “Not now.” I snap, still looking at Chrissie to answer me.

  “Yes, now,” she insists, prodding me in the arm. “You’ve been avoiding me all day; now why won’t you give me a bigger part — I’m a far better actress than Poppy.”

  “I told you, not now!” I don’t want to be rude, but this is more important. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  Only Chrissie doesn’t hear any of this; she’s already on her way out, thinking I don’t care about her.

  Swerving to avoid Finny as he sticks the camera in my face, I catch Chrissie up at the doors. “Hey, wait up!”

  She slows to a stop and turns to face me.

  “Look, I’m really sorry about all this,” I apologise. “Fiona’s been bugging me all week. Let’s go to the library; we can talk there.”

  “Forget it!”

  The hostility knocks me back. “But I want to help.”

  “If you wanted to help, you wouldn’t keep ignoring me to speak to your friends!”

  “I didn’t ask her to come and talk to me.”

  “I don’t care,” she cries, her eyes filling up with tears. “It’s always something!”

  I groan again; when she goes off on one, there’s no telling her anything, and with our row centre stage, I just stand there and wait for her to stop.

  “This is all your fault,” she goes on. “You ruin everything. You always do!”

  I bite my lip for real to stop me from saying something back. She doesn’t mean it, she never does, and I know in five minutes she’ll be in tears, begging me to forgive her.

  “I HATE you, Rich!”

  Jones rolls his eyes like he’s sympathising with me, but it’s not enough to stop me from going bright red when she stomps off, leaving me alone in the spotlight.

  “What’s going on?” Spencer demands, his black eyes as angry as I’ve seen them.

  “What’s any of this got to do with you?” I snap, still all tense from Chrissie giving me grief.

  “Everything if you’ve been upsetting her again!”

  I tell you, I don’t know how I stopped myself from telling him to get lost. Fortunately, my brain kicks in, and doing what I should have done before this got all out of control, I go and look for Chrissie so I can take care of her as I promised.

  Chapter 16

  Wishing Chrissie and I shared that invisible twin thing so I knew where to find her, I try the girls’ toilets at the end of the corridor.

  “Chrissie?” Deciding not to go inside, in case there are other girls there, I knock on the door. “Chrissie?”

  When no one answers, I push the door open; when she’s this upset, she’s quite likely to do something stupid. “Chrissie?”

  Hearing nothing, I go inside, and before I even get the chance to open up the first cubicle door, the fire alarm goes off, stops, starts again, stops, starts again, and then wails at ear-bleeding volume.

  Fire! I know we’re supposed to leave everything and go to the playing fields, but I’m not leaving without Chrissie, and frantically searching the rest of the cubicles, I exit the girls’ toilets and run straight into Parker.

  “And where do you think you’re going, Jarvis?” he demands, glaring down at me.

  “To find my sister and get out of here before I burn to death!”

  “There’s no fire, Jarvis,” he tells me, like I’m stupid. “Some lowlife took my mobile. Now stand still with your hands on your head.”

  For the first time I notice all the others standing around with their hands on their heads, their bags and anything else they were carrying lying at their feet. When I get my call home tomorrow, I’m definitely going to tell Mum about this.

  “I haven’t stolen anything, sir!” I tell him, doing the same. “I’ve been with Jones and—”

  “Did I give you permission to talk?” Parker snarls, frisking me like the security guards do at the airports if you’ve walked through the metal detector and it beeps. “Loss of privileges for forty-eight hours!”

  “But I’ve got a call with my parents tomorrow.”

  “If you talk back one more time, Jarvis, you’ll have no call home for the rest of the term. Now get back to your dorm!”

  “But I left my camera in the Main Hall.”

  “ENOUGH!” he roars, looking like some kind of insane terminator. “Your camera has just lost you all privileges for seventy-two hours!”

  How dare he call me a thief! I’ve never taken anything in my life; stomping off to the Main Hall, I find Jones, Baxter, Finny, and everyone else being frisked.

  “What’s been taken, sir?” asks Bollinger, jogging over.

  “My mobile,” Parker replies. “Only put it down for a minute when I was stepping outside for my nightly constitutional…”

  Everyone knows he was sneaking out for a quick smoke. Normally we all have a laugh at the different excuses he comes up with, but even Bollinger gasps in horror!

  “Are you getting your camera, Jarvis?” Parker barks at me.

  As Jones and Poppy are frisked by Wilson, I retrieve my camera and case from the table and manage to tip the spare battery and all my filters onto the floor. Crap, why does everything have to go wrong when I’m in a hurry? Dropping to my knees, I throw everything back inside and freeze when I see Parker’s mobile with its distinctive rugby ball case poking out from the pocket where I normally store my spare battery.

  Shit. That’s all I can think as I hear Parker’s voice and approaching footsteps. Shit, I’m completely screwed.

  “Go and check the dorms,” Parker tells Bollinger. “Get Wheeler-Hopkinson to stop anyone else from leaving their rooms!”

  If this were any other school, I’d just give Parker his mobile and tell him it wasn’t me. He might not believe me, in which case my parents would put him straight, and that would be it. If I was really unlucky, I might get a detention — that was what happened to Dave when he got blamed for throwing Josh Lisbon’s shoes in the school pool, but St. Bart’s isn’t a normal school — and that’s why I slipped Parker’s mobile into my trouser pocket.

  “Come on, Jarvis,” Parker moans, nudging me. “I haven’t got all night.”

  I can act; even without all the drama lessons, I was good, but there’s nothing I can do to stop my hands from shaking as I hope neither of them notice the mobile hidden in my front pocket.

  “Now back up to your dorm.”

  “Yes, sir,” I reply, mind racing for how I’m going to off-load his mobile unseen.

  “Well, move, boy!”

  Head down, I join everyone else returning to their dorms. Think, Rich, think. Where can I put it so no other poor sucker will get the blame? The dining room’s not an option. Neither are the steps outside the back doors where Parker goes for his sneaky smokes. I guess I could leave it in his room, but with everyone being sent back to their dorms, he’ll know for sure the thief has to be someone from year ten or eleven.

  Keeping my hands hidden in my front pockets, the mobile continues to torture me. I need to dump it. If it rings now, I’m dead, and as my stomach morphs into a bowling ball of fear, I see Chrissie coming out of the girls’ locker room, tears pouring down her cheeks.

  Torn between ditching the mobile and looking after Chrissie, the decision’s made for me when Chrissie runs over. />
  “Rich, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it — honest.”

  I know she feels she has to apologise for having a go at me earlier, but if I don’t lose the mobile, she’ll be apologising to a corpse.

  “Everything’s cool,” I tell her, extracting her arms from around my neck. “Now go to your dorm before you get in trouble.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  I squirm in my impatience to get away as more kids file past us. “Nothing. Talk tomorrow after breakfast.”

  “Are you still mad with me?” she asks, crying even more.

  As the last of the kids disappear upstairs, I allow myself to relax a fraction. “No, I just need to do something really important.”

  “What?”

  I open my mouth to make up some lie, anything, when what I dreaded most in the world happened. Parker gets a text.

  Hand diving into my pocket, I fumble to silence the beeps as Chrissie stares at me open mouthed. She’s my twin, she’s been with me forever, but she looks at me as if I’m a stranger.

  “Chrissie, I never took it — someone put it in my bag.”

  She knows I’m no thief, but I still can’t breathe as I wait to see what she’s going to do.

  “All right,” she says, panting hard. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “He’s going to give it back to Mr Parker,” says a voice behind me, and when I turn round, I realise Spencer’s heard everything.

  I played this murderer once. Mrs Brown taught me how to get the audience’s sympathy by showing as much guilt as I did rage and violence. I lived the guilt so long, I puked after my first night, but that’s nothing to the guilt that pounds through me now.

  “You’ve got it all wrong…” I never took Parker’s mobile, but not owning up — trying to dump it, it feels like I did.

  “No?” says Spencer, his voice as cold as his black eyes. “So you’re not a dirty, lowlife thief?”

  “No!” I cry, keeping myself between him and Chrissie. “Someone put it—”

  “Yeah, right,” says Spencer, refusing to hear me out. “Tell that to Parker!”

  In my panic, I grab his arm to stop him, to try one more time to convince him, but he’s too mad to listen, and the next thing I know, he’s smacked me so hard, it sounded like a crack of thunder going off inside my brain.

  As his fist comes swinging towards my face for a second time, something goes off inside me, and launching myself at him, we both crash to the ground in a tangled mess.