Thyla - Kate Gordon [11]
Another word popped into my head: surrounded.
The two girls seemed to deflate, their chests sinking, their faces becoming weary.
The short girl sighed and said, ‘I’m sorry, Ms Hindmarsh. We got in trouble in the breakfast hall for making, um, rude things. Out of our pancakes.’
‘We just wanted to see if we could do it!’ the other girl blurted. ‘I mean, we’re getting really good with our mashed potato sculpture, and we just wanted to see if we could do it with pancakes, too, and it started off with just rabbits and angels and things, but then … it was my fault. I wanted to see if I could make a pen–’
‘Okay, enough, girls!’ Ms Hindmarsh said, quickly. Her voice was a little bit harder than when she had been talking to me and Charlotte, but it still wasn’t unkind. ‘We have a new student here,’ she said, putting a hand on my shoulder. It felt warm. ‘We should be showing her what upstanding young women we have here at Cascade Falls. Do you think you’re doing a very good job of that? Laurel?’
The red-haired girl shook her head, and her corkscrew auburn ringlets bounced and danced.
‘Erin?’
The other girl said, ‘No, Ms Hindmarsh. I’m sorry. It really was all my fault.’
‘I don’t really mind whose fault it is. It won’t happen again, will it?’
‘No, Ms Hindmarsh. I promise it won’t,’ said Lauren. ‘Just, please, please, please don’t give us another detention! We’re already in detention until the middle of next month!’
I looked up at Ms Hindmarsh’s face, and was surprised to see that she seemed to be trying not to smile. Her eyes were glittering, and the corners of her mouth were twitching up and down.
She looked behind the girls at the man in the tweed jacket, who was now standing in the doorway, hands on hips. He looked very, very cross. ‘What do you think, Mr Beagle?’ she asked.
‘Well, I think the more time these two have in detention, thinking very hard about actions and consequences, the better! The way they behave is dreadful. And dangerous. They need to be more vigilant. Yes, more detention is just what they need.’
‘I think they are already ashamed enough, don’t you, Mr Beagle? To have acted in such a way in front of a new student?’
I looked at Laurel, and she gave me a small grin. One that looked anything but ashamed. I smiled shyly back.
‘You’re the boss,’ said Mr Beagle grumpily. He turned to me and said, ‘Welcome to Cascade Falls,’ and then marched quickly back down the hallway.
Above me, seemingly from nowhere, a deafening noise blared out. The noise shocked me and I cowered, squeezing my eyes tightly shut. It sounded like some angry animal, threatening to pounce.
Ms Hindmarsh squeezed my shoulder. ‘Sorry, Tessa, I’m afraid Miss Bloom hasn’t quite got a handle on the new PA system yet. Her morning bells are always thunderous, or so quiet you can’t hear them and so you turn up twenty minutes late. You can’t use that as an excuse this time, though, Laurel and Erin. Come on, chop, chop!’
She raised an eyebrow at Laurel and Erin, who scampered quickly back up the stairs and into the hall.
From inside the hall, I could hear the thunder of many feet on a hard floor, and, before the door slammed shut again, I caught a glimpse of my new schoolmates.
So many of them! All shapes and sizes! And they were all dressed exactly as I was, in the charcoal grey uniform of Cascade Falls.
They all look so different from one another, I thought. And yet the same. Perhaps I really can fit in here.
‘Well, Tessa, this is it,’ said Ms Hindmarsh, squeezing my shoulder. ‘Time to start your life as a student of Cascade Falls!’
Words I did not know before my first day at Cascade Falls:
netball (a team sport where balls are thrown from person to person and then into a hoop with a net on it)
basketball (from what I can understand, exactly the same as netball, only you bang the ball against the ground sometimes and you can jump up when you throw the ball towards the net, which does seem a bit like cheating