eighteen

A DISEMBODIED HEAD

I positively swarm back up the rope, easily managing even the hardest part, which is getting a good enough foot grip on it so that I can grab onto the open skylight frame and boost myself up. The iron frame cuts into my fingers when I put my full weight on my hands. This would have been so much easier a few years ago, when I had the body of a little girl. But everything was easier when I was twelve. I flew on the bars so easily. Lifting my own body weight was nothing.

I push away the momentary flash of self-hate—I’m so fat, etc., etc.—and clamber out onto the roof. Squatting down, I lower the skylight back into place, propping it slightly open with the coil of rope, just in case I ever need to sneak in there again. And then I’m running across the roof, lowering myself down onto the fire escape, and picking my way down it to the top-floor window, in a tearing hurry to find Lizzie and confront her.

Only there’s a bit of a hitch with that, because as my head comes round the corner of the window, scouting out to check that there’s no one in the corridor, I freeze in horror. I’m looking directly into the beady eyes of Miss Newman, who is just coming round the corner of the corridor, heading toward the staircase.

Noooooooooo! I duck my head back again and flatten myself against the wall, praying to God that she didn’t see me.

There’s what feels like the longest silence ever in the history of the world. Then, over the sound of my heart trying to pound its way right through the wall of my chest, I hear a booming “Oh, dear God in heaven!” so deep that it sounds like a melancholy whale complaining about how miserable the world is.

I hardly dare to breathe.

“Maureen? What ees eet?” comes another voice.

This one is equally recognizable. It’s Mademoiselle Fournier, the French teacher.

“Louise, the most extraordinary thing just happened. I thought I saw a disembodied head in that window!”

“Mon Dieu!” exclaims Mademoiselle Fournier.

I have to say that despite my panic at being discovered, I am also very creeped out by hearing teachers call each other by their first names. It’s not that I don’t know on some level that teachers have private lives and first names like everyone else. But I really don’t want to think about it.

“Was eet floating in the air?” Mademoiselle Fournier asks. “Like a ghost?”

“No, no,” Miss Newman’s voice rises in pitch. “It was more  .  .  . fleeting. Like a sudden vision.”

“So eet was just zere for a moment?”

“Yes, that’s right. Just a moment.”

Mademoiselle Fournier, I think, clears her throat.

“Are you sure eet was a ’ead? Per’aps eet was a bird zat you saw? Or a pigeon?”

There’s a pause.

“I don’t know,” Miss Newman confesses. “I could have sworn it was a head  .  .  . but maybe  .  .  .”

“Maureen?” says Mademoiselle, “ ’Ave you been feeling quite well? Do you per’aps ’ave a ’eadache?”

“Not really,” Miss Newman sighs. “But I think I feel one coming on.  .  .  .”

“ ’Ave you been per’aps under stress?”

“Not really. But now I feel very stressed indeed.”

“Well, naturellement .  .  .  eet ees very stressful to see ’eads that are not zere! Very stressful! I zink per’aps you should menzion zis to the school nurse, Maureen.”

“Maybe it was one of the girls! Larking around!” Miss Newman booms, clearly not madly keen on this portrait of herself as an incipient loony two steps away from a straitjacket and a padded cell.

I hear firm strides on the stone floor, and freak out. Someone is coming straight for the window. I cower on the fire escape, not daring to make a dash for it up onto the roof. They’d hear my feet on the iron steps.

I’m trapped. I am in so much trouble my head can’t even get round the amount of trouble that I’m in. And then I hear a third voice. It’s unmistakable, because it, too, has an accent.

An American one.

“Miss Newman! I just saw this gigantic squirrel!”

I can hear Miss Newman swing round. Nothing in this world, not even a mysterious disembodied head, will stop her from sinking her teeth into a girl who’s breaking school rules.

“Taylor McGovern!” she says. “You are completely out of bounds!”

“I know, Miss Newman. I’m really sorry. I got completely turned around looking for the back staircase and now I’m, like, totally lost. But just now out of the window, I saw this, like, humunguous squirrel running along the fire escape! It really freaked me out! I didn’t know you had, like, giant squirrels in England!”

Taylor has adopted a stereotyped American Valley Girl voice. It makes her sound brainless, like the kind of girl who really might get lost in the teachers’ wing. Good acting, if Miss Newman doesn’t spot it  .  .  .

“A squeeerrel!” exclaims Mademoiselle. “Zat is ze answer, Maureen! Eet was a squeeerel zat you saw!”

“A squirrel?” Miss Newman says, skeptical. “Let me just have a look outside to make sure.”

Oh no. I can hear her heading for the window again.

“Zere is no one out zere!” cries Mademoiselle, her high heels clicking on the floor behind Miss Newman. “Look, ze window ees too ’igh to reach, you would ’ave to climb up zere!”

“I just want to have a quick look outside!” Miss Newman insists, and she’s so close now that she sounds right next to me; any moment she’ll see that the window’s open a crack.

“Ohmigod, it’s over here!” Taylor calls, sounding like she’s further away. “It’s running down the fire escape—you can see it from the hall window! Wow, it’s as big as a dog! A big dog!”

Okay, Taylor, I think, don’t overdo it.  .  .  .

There’s a clickety-clack of running heels, as presumably the teachers turn and hurry down the hall to where Taylor is standing.

“It just jumped into that tree,” Taylor says, “can you see it?”

“I can see nozzing,” Mademoiselle declares. “But Maureen, you realize now eet ees a squeerel you see? Zis girl, she sees it, too, and she sees it ees a beeg squeerel, nozzing else.”

There’s a long pause as Miss Newman frowns gloomily.

“Come downstairs, we weell go to see ze nurse, she weell give you somezing zat weell ’elp you to feel better. You, Taylor ees your name? Follow us, please. I weell show you ’ow to return to the main staircase.”

The voices move away again, and I realize from the sounds that they’re all going down the stairs. My legs have gone all wobbly. I actually feel them collapsing underneath me. I sink to my knees, taking deep breaths, dropping my head down to get the blood flowing back to it. I must have been there for at least five minutes, calming myself down. I could do with a dose of whatever the school nurse is currently doling out to Miss Newman.

And then a beautiful thought floods through me, icing on the cake. Every time Miss Newman picks on me in class from now on, all I need to do to cheer myself up is remember her desperately trying to prove to Mademoiselle Fournier that she isn’t going mad, while Mademoiselle Fournier drags her off to the school nurse to stuff her full of maximum-strength tranquilizers.

I sigh with happiness. This is turning out to be a really good day.

But there’s another mystery to solve now: how on earth did Taylor manage to turn up just in time to save my arse?