Читать книгу Afterworlds: The 13th Horseman - Barry Hutchison - Страница 9

“WELL THEN, MR FINN,” droned Dr Black, his mouth pulled into a mirthless grin. “Perhaps you would care to fascinate and bedazzle us all by sharing something about yourself?”

The old teacher’s leather seat creaked softly as he bent his skeletal frame forward and leaned his elbows on the neat desk. “Aside from your apparent inability to arrive at my class on time,” he added, “which we are all now only too aware of.”

Dr Black was the most angular person Drake had ever seen. Every part of him seemed to taper to a sharp edge, from his pointed chin to the cheekbones that jutted like tiny pyramids from the craggy desert of his face. He wore a dark, neatly pressed suit that looked a size too big for his spindly body. His fingers, which he was steepling together in front of him, resembled chicken bones with fingernails drawn on the ends.

Drake turned from Dr Black’s gaze and swallowed nervously. His new classmates sat like a battalion before him, row after regimented row of unfamiliar faces watching him expectantly. He felt his mouth go dry as his mind frantically scrambled to dig up just one interesting fact to share. All he needed to do was come up with a piece of trivia about himself that was so interesting they’d all be clamouring to become his friend. The only problem was that right now he was having difficulty remembering his own name.

He could tell them about the shed this morning. But no, that would make him sound insane. What could he tell them, then?

Drake felt a tickle as a bead of sweat formed just above his nose. It meandered all the way down to the tip, before dripping silently on to the scuffed floor.

“Mr Finn?”

“I had Frosties for breakfast,” Drake babbled. He bit down on his bottom lip immediately, trying too late to stop the words spilling out of his mouth. His eyes flitted between the six or seven stunned expressions in the front row, and for a few long moments the world seemed to stand perfectly still.

Three boys, shorter than all the others, began sniggering at the back of the class. Drake leaped into the air as the teacher slammed his hands down hard on his desk and roared “BE QUIET!” No one else sniggered after that.

“Well,” said Dr Black, composing himself. “That was… enlightening.” He unfolded upright and gave Drake a firm tap on the back of the head. “Now, if you could endeavour to contain your sugar high long enough to take a seat, the rest of you turn to page two hundred and forty-seven and we’ll find out what the history books have to say about my old pal, Attila the Hun.”

Drake sidestepped through a narrow corridor left between two rows of desks until he came to the only empty seat in the classroom. He hurriedly sat down, desperate to blend in and no longer be the centre of attention.

Almost at once, a skinny girl with big eyes and short hair leaned across from the next desk over and flashed him a smile. “Hi,” she whispered.

“Um, hi,” he whispered back.

“You shouldn’t eat Frosties,” she told him. “Do you have any idea what goes into those things?”

“Sugar and cornflakes?” Drake guessed. This seemed to take the wind right out of the girl’s sails.

“Right. Exactly,” she agreed. “And they exploit tigers,” she added, rallying somewhat.

“Yeah, but… cartoon tigers, though,” offered Drake weakly.

“Still tigers, though, innit?” the girl continued.

“Er… I suppose so,” Drake shrugged. He noticed a brief flicker of a smile pass across the girl’s face. “Are you winding me up?” he asked.

“Might be,” the girl admitted, and the smile widened further.

“Right. Who are you, by the way?” Drake whispered.

“Mel Monday,” beamed Mel, holding out her hand for Drake to shake. “I’m your new best friend.”

It was around four hours later when Drake found himself hurrying through a twisting labyrinth of corridors, desperately hunting for the boys’ toilets.

He’d spent the first fifteen minutes of the lunchtime break searching, and he almost yelped with delight when he finally spotted the familiar black outline of a man that signalled the end of his search.

He was hopping from foot to foot as he pushed through the door and into the overpowering, yet strangely comforting odour of the toilets. Drake’s fingers fumbled with his trousers, finding it difficult to undo the safety pin that had held them up ever since his button broke off last term. The trousers were a size too small now, which only served to make the pain in his stomach ten times worse.

With a triumphant cry, he finally managed to get them undone. Drake let out a loud sigh of satisfaction as a morning’s worth of pent-up terror sloshed past the lemon fragrance cubes and down the drainage hole of the stainless steel urinal wall.

He was barely halfway through when something hit him heavily on the back. He stumbled forward, spraying his trouser legs with urine. Powerless to stop mid-flow Drake twisted his neck and looked down into the greasy, gargoyle-like faces of the trio of shorter boys who’d been sniggering at him in Dr Black’s class that morning. They scowled back up at him.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” said the raspy-voiced leader of the group, his eyes little more than narrow slits in his pock-marked cheeks. “These are our toilets. No knob ’eads allowed!”