Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [123]
Ricky had been working on how to slip by without anyone noticing him. At all his previous schools he’d used something similar. It always worked. He simply became the kind of kid the crowd ignored. He thought of it as his cloak of invisibility.
Now his cloak of invisibility had been torn from him.
The whole mood of the school had changed. It was no longer the same place. Ricky had nowhere to hide any more.
As he hurried down the corridors kids were thronging to their classes, like a river flowing. And Ricky was like a rock in that river, fixed and immovable. Dividing the current. The kids flowed around him, each reacting to him.
Some kids reacted by standing respectfully aside to let him by. Some reacted by deliberately brushing against him.
That had always happened to Ricky, people seeming to go out of their way to bump into him.
Before, he would have flinched at such contact. He would have interpreted it as hostility. Now he knew the truth.
The ones who bumped into him were hoping some of his special status would rub off on them.
The members of the pack wanted to share in the power of the leader.
Before, Ricky would have been unnerved by the apparent challenge of the contact. Now every bump only seemed to confirm his status as the alpha male. Each collision was a token of respect. And despite himself Ricky grew more confident with every contact, settling comfortably into his inevitable role in the group.
And as his posture reflected his casual dominance, the collisions became less frequent. Other males in the group ceased to challenge him.
So the crowd of kids flowed around Ricky, hurrying to their lessons, like water around a rock in a stream. And, like the rock in that stream, Ricky shaped the flow.
The crowd came at him, flowing in behavioural patterns.
Some kids stood aside to let him by. Some girls marched past him, eyes fixed firmly ahead, pretending not to notice him. Others bobbed towards him, clumsily bumped into him, then drifted on, hoping to have picked up some of the strange authority he had.
Ricky stopped at his locker and collected the books for his first class. He stood there leaning on the open door, catching his breath. In the gloom of the locker he could just see a small white shape, seemingly floating in the shadows.
Ricky knew exactly what that shape was. It was an envelope taped to the underside of the top shelf in his locker, the shelf where he stacked his books. The envelope was full of money. All summer Ricky had slaved away at menial jobs to earn that money. His parents had told him he should put it in the bank.
Ricky didn’t want to put it in the bank. He wanted it right here where he could put his hands on it immediately, in case things got too much. In case he needed to turn and run. To grab this envelope full of money and turn and run, as far as the money would take him.
Ricky stood leaning on the door of his locker, listening to the kids behind him, streaming busily past on the way to their classes. Ricky had to hurry or he’d be late. But he stood there, staring in at the envelope and thought about not going to his class at all. About tearing the envelope free and heading for the door. Run away from the school and his family, and everything in his old life.
No. Things weren’t that bad. Ricky was feeling a lot calmer now. The situation wasn’t so bad. Given time the kids would forget. They’d stop reacting to him like this and he could sink safely back into anonymity.
He didn’t have to run.
Ricky turned away from the envelope taped to the shelf.
He shut the door of the locker behind him and hurried on towards his first class of the day.
Kids still streamed past. Ricky joined the stream, going down the staircase that led towards the school library. It was exciting being in a mass of people.
He couldn’t stop himself falling into the rhythm of the moving crowd. The crowd was like a living thing to him, a collective entity. And he understood how this beast behaved.
Ricky moved through the crowd, sensing its inner pulse.
He knew its patterns and its mood, and he knew